Chloramphenicol Sodium Succinate

Chloramphenicol succinate (CAPS), a prodrug of the antibiotic chloramphenicol, exerts a profound cardioprotective effect in a clinically relevant porcine model of acute myocardial infarction. In anesthetized pigs subjected to 45 minutes of coronary occlusion and 3 hours of reperfusion, administration of CAPS significantly reduced infarct size. Pretreatment with CAPS 10 minutes before ischemia reduced infarct size to 25±5% of the area at risk, compared to 56±5% in the saline control group. A delayed treatment, administered 30 minutes after occlusion, still provided significant cardioprotection, reducing infarct size to 41±4%.
Mechanistically, this protective effect was associated with the induction of autophagy, evidenced by a rapid upregulation of Beclin-1 and LC3-II, two key proteins involved in autophagosome formation. These findings support the concept that pharmacological upregulation of autophagy may be a novel therapeutic strategy to limit ischemia-reperfusion injury.

Fig. 1 Expression of Beclin-1 and LC3-II with Chloramphenicol succinate pretreatment. (Sala-Mercado J A.; et al. 2011)