Role Of Lipid Carriers in Overcoming Drug Resistance in Cancer

Drug resistance remains a significant challenge in cancer therapy, leading to treatment failure and disease progression. This resistance, caused by mechanisms such as efflux transporter overexpression, altered drug targets, and anti-apoptotic pathways, limits the efficacy of conventional chemotherapeutics. Lipid carriers, including liposomes, solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs), and nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs), have emerged as promising systems to address these challenges. Lipid carriers offer advantages such as improved drug solubility, stability, enhanced permeability, targeted delivery, and controlled release. Furthermore, they can circumvent resistance mechanisms like P-glycoprotein (P-gp)-mediated efflux and improve intracellular drug accumulation through endocytosis-based uptake. By enabling co-delivery of chemotherapeutic agents and resistance pathway inhibitors, lipid carriers provide a multifunctional approach to overcome multidrug resistance. This article provides a detailed overview of the mechanisms of drug resistance in cancer, the advantages of lipid carriers, their specific strategies for addressing resistance pathways, and their role in enhancing the therapeutic efficacy of chemotherapeutic agents.