“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  Earn 0.75 contact hours of nursing continuing professional development (NCPD), which may be applied to the nursing practice, oncology nursing practice, symptom management, palliative care, supportive care, or treatment ILNA categories, by listening to the full recording and completing an evaluation at myoutcomes.ons.org by January 26, 2026. The planners and faculty for this episode have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose. ONS is accredited as a provider of NCPD 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  Complete this evaluation for free NCPD.   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 [email protected].  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