The ability of elsamicin A, an antitumour antibiotic, to cleave DNA in the presence of ferrous iron and reducing agents, has been analysed using experimental and theoretical approaches. Experimentally, the antibiotic causes DNA breakage in the presence of ferrous ions and a reducing agent. The DNA-cleaving activity appears to be partially blocked by the action of superoxide dismutase and catalase. These results indicate that the elsamicin aglycone moiety (chartarin) can be involved in the production of free radicals. We have performed a broad theoretical study based in the quantummechanical framework, which allow us to determine the redox properties of elsamicin that lead to the generation of radical species. Our results clearly show that elsamicin acts as a true catalyst in the production of superoxide radicals. Moreover, it is suggested that the oxidation/reduction mechanism of the aglycone moiety of elsamicin (a lactone), leading to DNA breakage, is different from the mechanism followed by other well-known anti-cancer drugs, whose chromophore is a quinone. [12]. Fig. 1 shows the chemical structure of chartreusin. At first glance, this molecule resembles the anthracycline group of antibiotics: it also contains a chromophore and a sugar moiety. However, different from anthracyclines, the chromophore moiety (chartarin) is not a quinone, but contains a 5,12-dione portion, and bears a peculiar disaccharide bound to position 10 (Fig. 1). Since reduction and auto-oxidation occur in the quinone moiety of anthracyclines [S], it has been proposed that the 5,12-dione portion of chartreusin might be involved in the formation of free radicals [12]. Due to several drawbacks, chartreusin was not selected as an antitumour drug for clinical trials [13], and, until recently, there were no reports of chartreusin derivatives with improved activity [13, 141. Among them, the related antibiotic elsamicin A (Fig. 1) has been isolated from natural sources [13]. Elsamicin A is structurally related to chartreusin, but contains an amino sugar which makes it more water soluble than chartreusin, since at physiological pH this amino group will be positively charged. Elsamicin is about 30 times more potent than Correspondence to J.