Heme Broadly Promotes Pan-Cancer Resistance to Chemotherapy and Targeted Therapy

Background

/Objectives: Drug resistance is the dominant factor leading to failure in the treatment of metastatic cancer, accounting for over 90% of cancer deaths. Overcoming drug resistance is highly challenging due to the myriad mechanisms of cancer resistance. Notably, heme strongly promotes tumor development and progression. Heme serves as a prosthetic group for many subunits of mitochondrial respiratory and oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) complexes. Furthermore, heme is known to enhance the activities of a wide array of pro-tumorigenic and pro-resistance signal transducers and regulators.