The antihypertensive drug hydralazine activates the intrinsic pathway of apoptosis and causes DNA damage in leukemic T cells Ruiz Magaña, María José Martínez Aguilar, Rocío Lucendo, Estefanía Campillo-Davo, Diana Ruiz Ruiz, María Carmen Hydralazine Apotosis Mitochondria DNA damage Leukemia Epigenetic therapies have emerged as promising anticancer approaches, since epigenetic modifications play a major role in tumor initiation and progression. Hydralazine, an approved vasodilator and antihypertensive drug, has been recently shown to act as a DNA methylation inhibitor. Even though hydralazine is already tested in clinical cancer trials, its mechanism of antitumor action remains undefined. Here, we show that hydralazine induced caspase-dependent apoptotic cell death in human p53-mutant leukemic T cells. Moreover, we demonstrate that hydralazine triggered the mitochondrial pathway of apoptosis by inducing Bak activation and loss of the mitochondrial membrane potential. Hydralazine treatment further resulted in the accumulation of reactive oxygen species, whereas a superoxide dismutase mimetic inhibited hydralazine-induced cell death. Interestingly, caspase-9-deficient Jurkat cells or Bcl-2- and Bcl-xL-overexpressing cells were strongly resistant to hydralazine treatment, thereby demonstrating the dependence of hydralazine-induced apoptosis on the mitochondrial death pathway. Furthermore, we demonstrate that hydralazine treatment triggered DNA damage which might contribute to its antitumor effect. 2024-01-03T11:34:08Z 2024-01-03T11:34:08Z 2016-03-03 journal article M.J. Ruiz-Magaña, E. Lucendo, D. Campillo y C. Ruiz-Ruiz. The antihypertensive drug hydralazine activates the intrinsic pathway of apoptosis and causes DNA damage in leukemic T cells. Oncotarget 2016 Apr 19;7(16):21875-86 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/86544 10.18632/oncotarget.7871 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ open access Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License Impact Journals