Yesterday, I ended by saying that some patients refer to doxorubicin as The Red Devil. It gets this ominous nickname from its bright red color and the fact that it’s about a 10 on the “puke scale”. Ok, the real name is emetogenic scale, but what kid is going to understand that? It also has some other unpleasant side effects like causing mouth sores, darkening skin, and heart damage among others.
DNA is a double helix structure (shown in pretty picture) and in order to duplicate itself for cell division, the helix must “unzip or unwind” so that an exact copy of the DNA can be made.
Doxorubicin has many effects upon cancer and normal cells but it’s main pathways to destruction are:
1. It binds to DNA and ‘intercalates’ it. Basically this means it jams itself into the double helix which causes the strands to become distorted (See black and white picture). The white ‘rungs’ on the ladder are a normal part of the DNA, the black ‘rungs” are the doxorubicin stuck in there. This distortion makes it so the cell has a difficult, if not impossible time, unzipping the DNA to replicate it.
2. It creates free radicals – although not completely understood, this is the main theory of why heart damage occurs. Free radicals and how to protect the heart from its damage will be topics in the future.
#morethanfour #ChildhoodCancer365
2 thoughts on “How Doxorubicin Works”