Chemotherapy of breast cancer: are the taxanes going to change the natural history of breast cancer?

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Among the novel chemotherapeutic drugs introduced in the last decade, taxanes have emerged as the most powerful compounds and results available to date suggest that they will be remembered in the future as the breast cancer chemotherapy of the 1990s. The two taxanes (paclitaxel, Taxol™, Bristol-Myers Squibb and docetaxel, Taxotere™, Rhône-Poulenc Rorer) share some characteristics, but are also significantly different both in preclinical profile and, most importantly, in clinical characteristics. The main clinical differences are related to their different efficacy-toxicity ratio in relation to dose and schedule; the differing integrability of paclitaxel and docetaxel in anthracycline-taxane containing regimens, secondary to major differences in pharmacokinetic interactions between each taxane and the anthracyclines, and; the potential differences in level of synergism between each taxane and herceptin (HeR2Neu antibody/trastuzumab, Genentech/Roche). In clinical practice, the taxanes are now standard thera...

This publication has 48 references indexed in Scilit: