TY - JOUR AU - Huttunen, Johanna AU - Huttunen, Kristiina M. PY - 2022/05/25 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - The Role of Transporters in Future Chemotherapy JF - CHIMIA JA - Chimia VL - 76 IS - 5 SE - Scientific Articles DO - 10.2533/chimia.2022.454 UR - https://www.chimia.ch/chimia/article/view/2022_454 SP - 454-459 AB - <p>The expression of membrane transporter is often altered in cancer cells compared to their corresponding healthy cells. Since these proteins, classified into solute carriers (SLCs) and ATP-binding cassettes (ABCs), can carry not only endogenous compounds, nutrients, and metabolites, but also drugs across the cell membranes, they have a crucial role in drug exposure and clinical outcomes of chemotherapeutics. Curiously, up-regulation of SLCs can be exploited to deliver chemotherapeutics, their prodrugs, and diagnostic radio-tracers to gain cancer cell-selective targeting, as exemplified with L-type amino acid transporter 1 (LAT1). SLCs can also be inhibited to limit the nutrient uptake of cancer cells and thus, cell growth and proliferation. Furthermore, LAT1 can be utilized to deliver ABC-inhibitors selectively into the cancer cells to block the efflux of other chemotherapeutics suffering from acquired or intrinsic efflux transport-related multidrug resistance (MDR). Taking into account the current literature, compounds that can affect transporter up- or down-regulation of transporters in a cancer cell-selective manner could be a valuable tool and promising chemotherapy form in the future.</p> ER -