Current Status and Perspectives of Chemotherapy for Anthracycline-Pretreated Breast Cancer Randomized trials performed in anthracycline-pretreated breast cancer patients have demonstrated good activity of taxane-based regimens. In a face to face comparison, single-agent docetaxel proved to be significantly more effective than paclitaxel. Treatment with docetaxel was also associated with an incr...

Antitumor therapy with the anthracycline doxorubicin is limited by a dose-related cardiotoxicity that is aggravated by a concomitant administration of the taxane paclitaxel. Previous limited studies with isolated human heart cytosol showed that paclitaxel was able to stimulate an NADPH-dependent reduction of doxorubicin to its toxic secondary alcohol metabolite doxorubicinol. Here we characteri...

PURPOSE To explore the potential of navitoclax in combination with taxane-based chemotherapy in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) by defining mechanism of synergy and identifying correlative biomarkers. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN We treated a panel of NSCLC lines with a dose matrix of paclitaxel and navitoclax (formerly ABT-263), an inhibitor of Bcl-2, Bcl-x(L), and Bcl-w (1), and ...

BACKGROUND The risk of treatment-related death (TRD) and febrile neutropaenia (FN) with adjuvant taxane- based chemotherapy for early breast cancer is unknown in Malaysia despite its widespread usage in recent years. This study aims to determine these rates in patients treated in University Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC). PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients who were treated with adjuvant taxane-based...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to evaluate the tolerability of concurrent radiotherapy and cetuximab (bioradiotherapy [BRT]) after taxane-based induction chemotherapy in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). METHODS One hundred four patients with HNSCC received BRT with (29%) or without (71%) prior taxane-based induction chemotherapy. RESULTS Radiodermatitis (97%) and ski...

PURPOSE To study the role of survivin and its splice variants in taxane-resistant ovarian cancer. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN We assessed the mRNA levels of survivin splice variants in ovarian cancer cell lines and ovarian tumor samples. siRNAs targeting survivin were designed to silence all survivin splice variants (T-siRNA) or survivin 2B (2B-siRNA) in vitro and orthotopic murine models of ovarian ...

BACKGROUND The impact of cytotoxic agents on the risk of acute allergy-like adverse reactions (ARs) to intravenous iodinated contrast media (ICM) injections is unknown. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed 13,565 computed tomography (CT) scans performed in a consecutive cohort of cancer patients from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2012. Episodes of acute ICM-related ARs were reported to the p...

de Graan and colleagues report a retrospective study of the effects of cigarette smoking on taxane pharmacokinetics and myelosuppression. There was no difference in taxane pharmacokinetic clearance between smokers and nonsmokers. Further prospective studies of the effects of cigarette smoking on myelosuppression would be of interest.

The combination of farnesyltransferase inhibitors (FTIs) and taxanes has been shown to result in potent antiproliferative and antimitotic synergy. Recent phase I and II clinical trials have shown that this combination shows clinical activity in taxane-refractory or taxane-resistant cancer patients. To understand the mechanism behind these clinical observations, we used a cancer cell model of pa...

BACKGROUND We examined if inclusion of a taxane and more prolonged preoperative chemotherapy improves pathologic complete response (pCR) rate in estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer compared with three to four courses of 5-fluorouracil, doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide (FAC). PATIENTS AND METHODS Pooled analysis of results from seven consecutive neo-adjuvant chemotherapy trials includin...