Therapeutic Perspective of Temozolomide Resistance in Glioblastoma Treatment

Abstract

Glioblastoma (GB) is the most lethal form of primary brain neoplasm. TMZ is the first-line standard treatment, but the strong resistance constrains the efficacy in clinical use. GB contains glioma stem cells (GSCs), which contribute to TMZ resistance, promote cell survival evolvement, and repopulate the tumor mass. This review summarizes the TMZ-resistance mechanisms and discusses several potential therapies from the conservative opinion of GSC-targeted therapy orientation to the current view of TMZ resistance-aimed efficacy, which will provide an understanding of the role of heterogeneity in drug resistance and improve therapeutic efficacy in general.

Keywords:

• Glioma stem cells
• temozolomide
• drug resistance
• glioblastoma
• targeted therapy

Acknowledgments

Thanks to YL, PZ, and DH for their critical review of this manuscript.

Author contributions

All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript. LQL and LD contributed to the conception and design of the paper. LQL and SZL drafted the paper. SZL provided useful comments and suggestions. LD and LQL revised the paper.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the Natural Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality (Z190018), The National Natural Science Foundation of China (81870123), and the National Science Foundation for Young Scientists of China (81902545). Thanks for the biological and medical engineering core facilitates of School of Life Science, Beijing Institute of Technology.