Novel pharmacological approach for the prevention of multidrug resistance (MDR) in a human leukemia cell line

•Multi drug resistance is a major obstacle to the success of cancer chemotherapy.•The mechanism of MDR involves active drug efflux transport by P-gp/ABCB1, MRP2/ABCC2 and BCRP/ABCG2 genes.•The drug efflux adversely effect chemotherapeutics and impart negative impact on the future of anticancer therapy.•The MBFs treatment with optimal dose of imatinib induced apoptosis of K562 cells.•MBFs assured the reduced efflux of imatinib through downregulating the drug efflux genes.