Anna Robaszkiewicz, MD, PhD, from the University of Lodz, and her team want to overcome multidrug resistance and help cancer patients. She has received more than PLN 1.3 million from the National Centre for Research and Development for her research. Multidrug resistance is a phenomenon when cancer cells acquire resistance to drugs. This means that therapies that were effective no longer work, and thus there is a problem in finding a new, effective therapy.

Researchers from the University of Lodz decided to take a close look at this process and try to inhibit it. The ABC family proteins, which additionally act as transporters across membranes that remove anticancer drugs from cells, are responsible for drug resistance. Researchers from Łódź have set themselves the goal of developing a method that will allow cancer cells to be deprived of the ability to express ABC proteins, thus allowing anticancer drugs to be retained inside the cells and thereby allowing their effect to be intensified. Additionally, this approach is expected to significantly increase the efficacy of chemotherapy especially in those patients who have already developed multidrug resistance. The target group for which scientists from Łódź, led by Anna Robaszkiewicz, MD, PhD, see the greatest hope are patients who are undergoing chemotherapy and have developed multidrug resistance. We are keeping our fingers crossed!