Why the Increase in Drug Concentration Does Not Always Mean improvved Effects

We are happy to announce that another paper from a very long-lasting project is finally out. This was a collaboration project with Dr. Richard Wheelhouse from the University of Bradford, UK and I cannot even remember the year, when we started it, something around 2014... more or less 10 years ago... Anyway, there were challenges all along the way, but the final conclusion was (now for the second time in a short period) that the increase in drug concentration does not necessarily mean that the pharmacological responses are elevated. And this is very evident with anti-cancer drugs (our vinblastine story posted in January 2024 proved the same), which suffers from many drug resistance mechanisms. So effluxing the drugs out of the cells and trying to inhibit it only, does not solve the problem in many cases. Anyway, if you want to read more about this temozolomide case that was published in European Journal Pharmaceutical Sciences recently, here is the link (should be open access). So the lesson to learn, we need better alkylating agents or combination therapies to improve the apoptosis-inducing effects that temozolomide is able to mediate.

Thank you for all the co-authors!