Resveratrol reverse multidrug resistance in adriamycin-resistant K562/A02 cells in vitro and in vivo

Multidrug resistance (MDR) represents a major challenge for successful chemotherapeutic treatment of cancer. Resveratrol (RES) is believed to have multiple bioactivities including anti-cancer, prevention of cardiovascular diseases, and anti-inflammatory. This study was aimed to examine the effect of resvertrol on human leukemic MDR K562/A02 cells. Treatment of combination of resveratrol and adriamycin (ADM) resulted in potentiation of cytotoxicity detected using a cell counting kit-8 assay, and treatment with a combination of RES and ADM caused synergistic enhancement of the proliferation inhibition effect. RES increased Rh123 retention and ADM accumulation in K562/A02 cells. Furthermore, the combined treatment of RES and ADM synergistically delayed the growth of xenografts in mice. In addition, the expression of P-glycoprotein (p-gp) was significantly decreased following treatment with resveratrol alone or in combination with ADM both in vitro and in vivo. These findings demonstrated that resveratrol is important in MDR and may be developed into a new reversal agent for cancer chemotherapy.