Editorial Page 1 of 5 Visnagin—a new protectant against doxorubicin cardiotoxicity? Inhibition of mitochondrial malate dehydrogenase 2 (MDH2) and beyond Lei Xi Pauley Heart Center, Division of Cardiology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298-0204, USA Correspondence to: Lei Xi, MD, FAHA. Associate Professor, Division of Cardiology, Box 980204, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1101 East Marshall Street, Room 7-020C, Richmond, VA 23298-0204, USA. Email:
[email protected]. Submitted Oct 08, 2015. Accepted for publication Oct 13, 2015. doi: 10.3978/j.issn.2305-5839.2015.10.43 View this article at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3978/j.issn.2305-5839.2015.10.43 Doxorubicin (DOX) is a broad-spectrum and potent with excessive ROS generation in mitochondria (12,13). anthracycline antibiotic that has been widely used since Due to the complex multi-factorial cellular and 1960s as a chemotherapeutic agent to treat a variety of molecular drivers underlying DOX cardiotoxicity, the human cancers (1). Despite its superior anti-cancer efficacy, optimal therapeutic approaches for protection against the clinical use of DOX is often limited by dose-dependent DOX cardiotoxicity have not yet been identified, despite cardiotoxicity, which may lead to irreversible dilated over 40 years of extensive research. Notably Herman et al. cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure (2,3). Currently in 1972 first introduced bisdioxopiperazine compound as predominant theories for explaining DOX cardiotoxicity a cardioprotective agent against DOX cardiotoxicity (14). include the DOX-induced increase of oxidative stress in The subsequent research in this area led to identification cardiomyocytes (4), alteration of mitochondrial energetics of dexrazoxane, the only drug currently approved by the (5,6), and direct effect on DNA.