Taxotere "Superior To Adriamycin"

Rhone-Poulenc Rorer's Taxotere (docetaxel) is the first agent to havedemonstrated superior anticancer activity compared to doxorubicin (Adriamycin), which is considered to be the most effective first-line monotherapy for breast cancer, according to the results of a Phase III study presented at the 20th Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

326 women who had previously received therapy with alkylating agents were enrolled in the trial. Patients who received docetaxel exhibited a 50% better overall response rate than patients who were treated with doxorubicin (48% in the docetaxel group against 33% in the doxorubicin group). Approximately 41% of the docetaxel patients had a partial response and 7% had a complete response. In the doxorubicin group, 29% had a partial response and 4% had a complete response.

In patients who had failed on at least one previous alkylating agent, more patients receiving docetaxel responded to therapy (47% vs 24%). The situation was the same for those patients with liver metastases (54% vs 27%). Docetaxel receivers also demonstrated a significantly-faster onset of response (12 weeks vs 23 weeks) and had an extended time to disease progression (26 weeks vs 21 weeks), although this was not significant.