Collateral Damage in Cancer Chemotherapy: Oxidative Stress in Nontargeted Tissues

Anthracyclines in current clinical use. Doxorubicin and daunorubicin are two prime anthracyclines used as anticancer drugs. Doxorubicin is used in treatment of breast cancer, aggressive lymphomas, childhood solid tumors, and soft tissue sarcomas, whereas daunorubicin is used to treat acute lymphoblastic or myeloblastic leukemias. Structural analogs of doxorubicin and daunorubicin (i.e., epirubicin, pirarubicin, idarubicin, aclarubicin, and mitoxantrone) were developed in the search for chemotherapeutics with limited cardiotoxicity; the success of this search has been rather modest. See text for details.