Neither Rain, nor Sleet …

While the university was officially closed on Nov. 30, 2006, approximately 40 students, faculty and staff braved wintry weather to attend the 2006 Sitlington Lecture in Toxicology.

Kendall B. Wallace, Ph.D., DABT, FATS, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Minnesota, presented “Mitochondrial Cardiomyopathy and the Compensated Metabolic State.”

Wallace’s presentation focused on the adverse side effects of drugs including anti-cancer agents. He discussed Doxorubicin (Adriamycin®), a widely used chemotherapeutic agent limited for prolonged clinical use by its toxic effects on the heart, and Doxorubicin-induced mitochondrial dysfunction as a cardiotoxic mechanism, including both the genomic and metabolic alterations that underlie adaptation to cardiac toxicity following doxorubicin exposure.

Understanding these adaptive changes in cellular metabolism in response to doxorubicininduced cardiac cell damage may lead to the development of more effective anti-cancer drugs, Wallace says.