Hypoxia-induced therapy resistance: Available hypoxia-targeting strategies and current advances in head and neck cancer.

ABSTRACT: Most solid tumors, such as head and neck cancers, feature a hypoxic microenvironment due to angiogenic dysregulation and the consequent disruption of their vascular network. Such nutrient-deprived environment can induce genomic changes in several tumor cell populations, conferring survival and proliferative advantages to cancer cells through immunosuppression, metabolic switches and enhanced invasiveness. These transcriptional changes, together with the selective pressure hypoxia exerts on cancer cells, leads to the propagation of more aggressive and stress-resistant subpopulations increasing therapy resistance and worsening patient outcomes. Although extensive preclinical and clinical studies involving hypoxia-targeted drugs have been performed, most of these drugs have failed late-stage

SUBMITTER: Codony VL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7814189 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature