The incidence and mortality of malignant tumors were increasing year by year worldwide，which was a serious threat to human life and health.Physical therapy was an important means of tumor treatment.However，tumor resistance to drugs was a main cause of treatment failure.Drug resistance significantly reduced the drug effect on tumor cells，and thus the tumor cells quickly relapsed and spread，lowering the quality of life of patients and shortening their survival time.Beta-elemene was a new national class Ⅱ anti-tumor phytochemical independently developed in China，which has been widely used in clinic because of its broad spectrum，high safety and low toxicity.Many studies showed that elemene could effectively reverse tumor cell resistance and had synergistic effect and decreased adverse reactions in combination with anti-tumor drugs.This paper investigated the mechanism of elemene in reversing the resistance of different resistant tumor cell lines，aiming to provide reference for the future clinical research.