Episode 296: Pharmacology 101: Anthracyclines and Other Antitumor Antibiotics

“The search for daunorubicin’s sister really led to this discovery of doxorubicin, which is an analog with much greater activity. The discovery of doxorubicin can be coined kind of as, ‘one of the best drugs born in Milan, Italy.’ And after that, a few analogs were developed and tested, and two that we currently use today, are idarubicin and epirubicin,” Puja Patel, PharmD, BCOP, clinical oncology pharmacist at the Delnor Hospital Northwestern Medicine Cancer Center in Geneva, IL, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a discussion about anthracyclines and other antitumor antibiotics. This episode is part of a series about drug classes, which we’ll include a link to in the episode notes. You can earn free NCPD contact hours after listening to this episode and completing the evaluation linked below. Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 The planners and faculty for this episode have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose. ONS is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation. Learning outcome: The learner will report an increase in knowledge of anthracyclines and antitumor antibiotics. Episode Notes The NCPD activity for this episode has expired, but you can still earn NCPD through many other ONS Podcast episodes. Find a full list of opportunities. Oncology Nursing Podcast: Pharmacology 101 series ONS Voice oncology drug reference sheets IV Cancer Treatment Education Sheets ONS Voice articles: The Evidence Is Building for ACE Inhibitors in Anthracycline-Associated Cardiotoxicity Outpatient Oncology Drug Series: Doxorubicin Is the Infamous Red Devil Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing articles: Nursing Alchemy: Transforming R-CHOP Information Into Essentials Dyspnea: Common Side Effect Cardiac Toxicity: Using Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors to Prevent Anthracycline-Induced Left Ventricular Dysfunction and Cardiomyopathy Oncology Nursing Forum article: Symptom Clusters in Lymphoma Survivors Before, During, and After Chemotherapy: A Prospective Study ONS Huddle Card: Antitumor Antibiotics Additional healthcare professional resources: Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People Harvard University Implicit Association Test OncoPharm Podcast ASCO Education Podcast The roots of modern oncology: from discovery of new antitumor anthracyclines to their clinical use Additional patient resources: National Comprehensive Cancer Network patient resources National Comprehensive Cancer Network patient webinars National Cancer Institute resources for patients To discuss the information in this episode with other oncology nurses, visit the ONS Communities. To find resources for creating an ONS Podcast Club in your chapter or nursing community, visit the ONS Podcast Library. To provide feedback or otherwise reach ONS about the podcast, email [e-mail]. Highlights From Today’s Episode “Anthracyclines are kind of categorized as topoisomerase II inhibitors, and these agents are very powerful in that they have—it's really like three drugs in one—they have various mechanisms.” TS 3:55 “We need to create a stable environment, and so we actually cut one of the cords, and that's exactly what topoisomerase is doing. It's cutting one of the DNA strands. And in this case, it's cutting two strands, and that's why it's called topoisomerase II, so it's cutting both of the strands. It's cutting the DNA, releasing some of that tension, allowing for replication, and then rejoining that portion. So, it's a very important enzyme, and it'll go about doing this for the entire strand of DNA.”