Weekly Docetaxel and Gemcitabine following Docetaxel plus Epirubicin or Vinorelbine as First-Line Treatment of Metastatic Breast Cancer: Results of a Multicenter Phase II Study

A systematic review of vinorelbine for the treatment of breast cancer

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy and safety profile of vinorelbine-based chemotherapy in different settings for the treatment of breast cancer. We performed a computerized search using combinations of the following keywords: "breast cancer", "breast neoplasms", "trial", "vinorelbine" and "navelbine". A total of 20 trials were included in this analysis, with a total of 5,080 patients accrued. Taxane was associated with enhanced overall survival (OS; p = 0.027) and response rate (RR; p = 0.037) as compared with vinorelbine in monotherapy, but did not show significantly favored progression-free survival (PFS; p = 0.136). Vinorelbine alone was equivalent to fluoropyrimidine treatment in RR (p = 0.79) for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer. For vinorelbine-combined regimens, the analysis showed that the vinorelbine group gave similar results as other regimens for OS (p = 0.849) and PFS (p = 0.143). The RR of vinorelbine-combined regimens was slightly better than that of the other regimens (OR, 1.17), but the difference was not statistically significant. In neoadjuvant setting, vinorelbine treatment was as active as AC (doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide) or DAC (doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide, docetaxel) regimens with respect to RR (p = 0.76) and pathologic complete response (pCR; p = 0.77), but showed lower occurrence of grade 3/4 adverse effects. The analysis also demonstrated that vinorelbine-containing therapy is effective as adjuvant, front-line or salvage therapy of metastatic breast cancer, even for patients who were previously treated with anthracyclines or taxanes.

Pulmonary toxicity among cancer patients treated with a combination of docetaxel and gemcitabine: a meta-analysis of clinical trials

PURPOSE

The combination of docetaxel and gemcitabine was tested in several studies in patients with lung, breast, and pancreatic cancers and other tumor entities. Some studies reported cases of severe or even fatal pulmonary toxicity that led to early termination of some trials. We created a meta-analysis model of published studies to identify explanatory factors for docetaxel-gemcitabine-dependent pulmonary toxicity.

METHODS

We searched MEDLINE/Pubmed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Clinical Trials database for prospective full-text studies that used a schedule of docetaxel and gemcitabine to treat a malignant disease. We performed a meta-analysis for proportions using the arcsine transformation and a meta-regression using a generalized linear mixed model based on a binomial distribution and a logit link.

RESULTS

We included 103 trials with 113 treatment arms comprising 5,065 patients (major entities included non-small cell lung cancer (n = 2,550), breast cancer (n = 1,119), pancreatic cancer (n = 466), and urothelial cancer (n = 161)). For the incidence of severe lung toxicity (common toxicity criteria [CTC] grades 3-5), we found a combined estimate of 2.70% (95% CI 2.26, 3.14). The estimate for the proportion of fatal cases was 0.35% (95% CI 0.21, 0.58). We found that the sequence of the chemotherapy schedule had no influence on the incidence of severe pulmonary adverse events (F-test F = 0.65, df = 3,113, P = 0.58) nor did the study phase, treatment line or ethnicity of the participants. We found that patients with breast cancer, compared to lung cancer patients, developed severe lung toxicity less frequently (OR = 0.18, 95% CI (0.09, 0.36)).

CONCLUSION

We could not demonstrate that a particular chemotherapy sequence of docetaxel-gemcitabine is associated with excess pulmonary toxicity. Patients with lung cancer are at a higher risk for severe pulmonary side effects with docetaxel-gemcitabine than are patients with breast cancer.

Biweekly docetaxel-containing chemotherapy may be the optimal schedule

The dosing schedule of docetaxel may affect its clinical activity and toxicity profile. Although triweekly docetaxel has higher antitumor activity but more severe hematological toxicity, weekly docetaxel seems to have less activity or fewer adverse events. To evaluate the efficacy and toxicity of biweekly docetaxel and mitoxantrone in patients with advanced breast cancer, the regimen consisting of docetaxel (60 mg/m), and mitoxantrone (8 mg/m) was administered intravenously to 59 patients every 2 weeks. Most (54.2%) of the patients experienced objective responses. The median time to progression for the whole group was 6.8 months. The median time to progression for patients with complete or partial response was 10.3 months, but only 3.6 months for patients with stable or progressive disease (P<0.001). Grade III/IV adverse events of neutropenia, thrombocytopenia, anemia, febrile neutropenia, and nausea/vomiting were documented in 61.0, 6.8, 3.4, 3.4, and 3.4% of the patients, respectively. The median overall survival was 16.9 months. In conclusion, biweekly use of docetaxel and mitoxantrone is a highly effective and well-tolerated regimen for patients with advanced breast cancer. The optimal dosage of docetaxel in combination with chemotherapeutic regimen may be given every 2 weeks.