The Mechanism of Drug Resistance in Cellular Pathogens: A Hypothesis

Drug resistance in pathogens including cancer cells, bacteria, protozoa, fungi and viruses remains the major global health challenge. To deal with drug resistance in pathogens, an understanding of drug resistance development is of great importance. Recently, we published a hypothesis that drug resistance in malaria parasites could be determined by the altered 3D genome architecture which regulates many normal genes in malaria parasites to form a “specific antidrug group of protein combinations” (SAGPC). Like a “specific antidrug substance” or an “antibody”, SAGPC might specifically resist the efficacy of drugs. In this paper, we further assume that drug resistance in cellular pathogens excluding non-cellular viruses might share the mechanism we proposed for drug resistance development in malaria parasites.