The ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter superfamily is composed of a variety of membrane transporters located on the cell membrane, which is not only involved in the transport of various substances of cells, but also related to many intracellular processes, making it very important for physiological and pharmacological effects (Dassa and Bouige, 2001). The human ABC transporter superfamily consists of seven subfamilies. There are 49 known human ABC transporters from ABCA to ABCG, of which 48 have physiological or pharmacological functions (Dassa and Bouige, 2001, Eckford and Sharom, 2009, Moore et al., 2023). ABC transporters primarily use the energy generated by ATP binding and hydrolysis to drive the transport of various substrates, including lipids, porphyrins, sterols and others (Moore et al., 2023, Wu and V. Ambudkar, 2014).

So far, one of the most important factors leading to the failure of chemotherapy is the production of multidrug resistance (MDR) in cancer cells (Fan et al., 2023, Gottesman et al., 2002, Szakács et al., 2006). MDR causes cancer cells to develop simultaneous resistance to a variety of structurally unrelated anticancer drugs (Gottesman et al., 2002, Szakács et al., 2006). Although the inhibition of apoptosis, the increase of DNA repair in cancer cells and the change of drug metabolism all lead to the occurrence of MDR, the drug resistance mediated by ABC transporter is one of the most significant mechanisms of MDR (Fan et al., 2023, Gottesman et al., 2002, Jin et al., 2023, Szakács et al., 2006). P-glycoprotein (P-gp, ABCB1), breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP, ABCG2) and multidrug resistance protein 1 (MRP1, ABCC1) have been proven to have the most significant effect on MDR in many studies (Cui et al., 2018, Ji et al., 2018, Wang et al., 2021d, Wu et al., 2019).

The ABCC subfamily is one of the largest subfamilies of the ABC transporter superfamily, containing 13 proteins (from ABCC1 to ABCC13), of which 9 proteins are named multidrug resistance proteins (MRPs) (from MRP1 to MRP9) (Wang et al., 2021d). These nine kinds of MRPs mediate MDR through the efflux of a variety of anticancer drugs (Wang et al., 2021d). In 2001, a large-scale gene sequencing project identified the cDNA sequence of MRP7 (ABCC10) for the first time and classified it as a new member of the MRP subfamily (Hopper et al., 2001). MRP7 is an ABC transporter with 1492 amino acids in length, and has a chemical structure similar to that of MRP1, MRP2, MRP3, and MRP6 (Hopper et al., 2001). This review article will focus on the structure, expression, and function of ABCC10/MRP7, summarize the known ABCC10/MRP7 substrates and reversal agents, and finally put forward some suggestions for the future research direction of ABCC10/MRP7.