Consequences of cell-to-cell P-glycoprotein transfer on acquired multidrug resistance in breast cancer: a cell population dynamics model

Consequences of cell-to-cell P-glycoprotein transfer on acquired multidrug resistance in breast cancer: a cell population dynamics model

Biology Direct, January 2011

21269489

Jennifer Pasquier, Pierre Magal, Céline Boulangé-Lecomte, Glenn Webb, Frank Le Foll

Cancer is a proliferation disease affecting a genetically unstable cell population, in which molecular alterations can be somatically inherited by genetic, epigenetic or extragenetic transmission processes, leading to a cooperation of neoplastic cells within tumoural tissue. The efflux protein P-glycoprotein (P-gp) is overexpressed in many cancer cells and has known capacity to confer multidrug resistance to cytotoxic therapies. Recently, cell-to-cell P-gp transfers have been shown. Herein, we combine experimental evidence and a mathematical model to examine the consequences of an intercellular P-gp trafficking in the extragenetic transfer of multidrug resistance from resistant to sensitive cell subpopulations.