How vitamin D helps fight treatment-resistant cancer.

ISLAMABAD -- The main cause of failure in chemotherapy treatments is that tumours develop resistance to anticancer drugs. Now, a new study reveals how vitamin D can help to overcome this problem. Researchers from South Dakota State University, in Brookings, have demonstrated that calcitriol and calcipotriol, two active forms ofvitamin D, can block a mechanism that enables cancer cells to become drug-resistant. The mechanism is a drug transporter protein called multidrug resistance-associated protein 1 (MRP1). The protein sits in the cell wall and drives a pump that ejects cancer drugs out of the cell. The researchers showed that calcitriol and calcipotriol can selectively hone in on cancer cells that have too much MRP1 and destroy them. Surtaj Hussain Iram, Ph.D. - an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at South Dakota State University - is the senior study author of a recent Drug Metabolism and Disposition paper about the findings.

He states that "Several epidemiologic and preclinical studies show...

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