Abstract
Mitochondria are intriguing organelles that are inherently present in most eukaryotic cells, with notable exceptions. They undertake multiple vital functions in a cell, including energy conversion, metabolite synthesis, regulation of the cellular redox state, production of reactive oxygen species, initiation of apoptosis, and buffering cellular Ca2+. Although aberrant, mitochondria are indispensable in malignant cells for critical involvement in synthesis of vital precursors for a variety of metabolic pathways. Therefore, mitochondria have recently emerged as plausible, as yet underexploited targets for cancer therapy. Here we discuss why mitochondria may be clinically relevant anti-cancer therapeutic modalities and give examples of agents that act via mitochondria that we, collectively, refer to as mitocans. Some of these agents hold a great promise for making it to the ‘bedside’, entering clinical trials.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by grants from the Czech Science Foundation GA16-12719S to J.N. and GA17-20904S to J.R. and from Czech Ministry of Health grant AZV16-31604A to J.N. Further support was provided by BIOCEV CZ.1.05/1.1.00/02.0109 from the ERDF and by RVO: 86652036.
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Boukalova, S., Rohlenova, K., Rohlena, J., Neuzil, J. (2018). Mitocans: Mitochondrially Targeted Anti-cancer Drugs. In: Oliveira, P. (eds) Mitochondrial Biology and Experimental Therapeutics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73344-9_27
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