Combined anthracycline-taxane regimens in the adjuvant setting.

Within the past decade there has been enormous interest in integrating the taxanes into the adjuvant breast cancer setting. Adjuvant trial designs in the early 1990s were absent of taxanes. By the mid 1990s, the taxanes were included in adjuvant trials, but were mainly limited to trials conducted in node-positive patients. Currently, taxanes are a chemotherapeutic modality in the majority of ongoing adjuvant trials in both node-negative and node-positive patients. These trials are being conducted in thousands of patients worldwide by several of the cooperative research organizations. Most of the adjuvant trials have focused on defining the clinical efficacy and toxicity of the concurrent or sequential use of taxanes with anthracyclines. The collective experience with taxanes over the next 3 to 5 years will make them one of the most intensely studied treatments in the history of patients with breast cancer. The outcome of these trials is greatly anticipated because they have the potential of changing the current standards of care in the adjuvant treatment of patients with breast cancer. Copyright 2001 by W.B. Saunders Company.