Roche's Xeloda/paclitaxel as effective as anthracylcines

Swiss drug major Roche says that strong results were presented at the American Society of Clincial Oncology's annual meeting, held in Atlanta, Georgia, on its anticancer drug Xeloda (capecitabine) in combination with paclitaxel.

According to the firm, a new randomized Phase III study in advanced breast cancer shows that the combination is equally as effective and safer than the combination of the anthracycline epirubicin plus paclitaxel, which is recognized as highly potent.

The Basle-headquartered group noted that anthracyclines are a common class of cancer drugs associated with cumulative cardiac toxicity, which can be life-threatening, restricting the number of treatments patients can receive during their lifetime due to progressive heart failure. Importantly, Xeloda plus paclitaxel is safer for patients as it has no cumulative side effects. The results support those seen in previous studies, which showed that Xeloda plus Sanaofi-Aventis' Taxotere (docetaxel) combination, leads to longer survival compared with docetaxel alone, for women with anthracycline-pretreated breast cancer, the firm noted.