Detoxifying doxorubicin

The anthracycline doxorubicin is a highly effective anti-cancer drug associated with severe side effects, including secondary tumors and cardiotoxicity. Doxorubicin induces DNA damage through double-strand breaks (DSBs) and epigenetic or chromatin damage through histone eviction. We examined whether separation of these activities can help to detoxify doxorubicin, while maintaining its chemotherapeutic efficacy. We show that anthracycline variants harboring the histone eviction activity alone remain potent anti-cancer drugs, while greatly alleviating cardiotoxicity and secondary tumor formation. We thus demonstrate that treatment-limited side effects of doxorubicin can be synthesized away, yielding effective chemotherapeutics towards improved and prolonged treatment responses and higher patient quality of life. Overall design: Comparison of FAIRE-seq and yH2AX ChIP-seq signal for several anticancer drugs