ABSTRACT
Apoptosis is the principal mechanism employed by the immune system and chemotherapeutic drugs in eradicating tumor cells. Being a genetically controlled process, apoptosis is susceptible to mutations, and deregulation of the apoptotic machinery is frequently observed in numerous types of cancers. Physiological or programmed cell death, also known as apoptosis, is an innate mechanism by which unwanted, defective, or damaged cells are rapidly and selectively eliminated from the body. The emergence of resistance to conventional therapeutic strategies has encouraged the design and/or exploitation of novel compounds with anticancer properties. Resveratrol (RSV) might represent a promising agent to be tested for cancer chemo-preventive activity and also as a sensitizing agent for cancer therapeutics in the clinical treatment of resistant tumors. In addition to its pleiotropic effects, RSV and new analogs offer a new class of chemo- and immunosensitizing agents with an ability to reverse drug- and immune-resistance phenotypes of cancer cells when used in combination with conventional therapeutics.
