Abstract The emergence of multidrug resistant (MDR) cancer phenotypes dramatically
attenuates the efficiency of antineoplastic drug treatments often leading to the failure
of chemotherapy. Therefore there is an urgent need to engineer new therapeutically
useful agents and propose innovative approaches able to defeat resistant cancer cells.
Although the remarkable anti-cancer features of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have
already been delineated their impact on MDR cancer has never been investigated. Herein,
we report that AgNPs have a notable anti-proliferative effect and induce apoptosis
mediated cell death both in drug sensitive and in MDR cancer cells. Furthermore we
show evidence that AgNPs exert an inhibitory action on the efflux activity of MDR
cancer cells which feature could be exploited to enhance drug accumulation. We verified
synergistic interactions of AgNPs with six different antineoplastic agents on drug
resistant cells which emphasizes the excellent potential of AgNPs as combinational
partners in the chemotherapy of MDR cancer.
