To rule out the possibility that multidrug resistance (MDR) genes are involved in development of acquired drug resistance in murine neuroblastoma (rMNB/MDL) cells made resistant to MDL, the expression of Mdr1a, Mdr1b, Mdr2 (multidrug resistance/P-glycoprotein), and Mrp-1 (multidrug resistance associated protein) was examined in rMNB-MDL cells.
In the childhood cancer neuroblastoma (NB), the level of expression of the multidrug resistance-associated protein (MRP1) gene is strongly correlated with expression of the MYCN oncogene in primary NB tumors, suggesting that MRP1 may be a target for MYCN-mediated gene regulation.
We have recently shown a close correlation between expression of the Multidrug Resistance-associated Protein (MRP) gene and the MYCN oncogene and provided evidence that high MRP expression is a powerful independent predictor of poor outcome in neuroblastoma (Norris et al., New Engl.J.Med., 334, 231-238, 1996).
Analysis of 209 neuroblastoma patient tumors revealed that, in contrast with ABCC1 and ABCC4, low rather than high ABCC3 expression was associated with reduced event-free survival (HR of recurrence or death = 2.4, 95% CI = 1.4 to 4.2; P = .001), with 23 of 53 patients with low ABCC3 expression experiencing recurrence or death compared with 31 of 155 patients with high ABCC3.