Breast cancer is the most common malignancy of females. In Germany about 46,000 women come down with breast cancer yearly.
Present therapies cannot cure the metastatic disease, the main focus is improvement of quality of life and prolongation of life. It is therefore necessary to test new substances and/or new combinations and therapy concepts. Among the most active cytotoxic agents used in advanced breast cancer are the anthracyclines. Since conventional anthracyclines are often used as adjuvant or neoadjuvant therapy their cardiotoxicity restricts their use in the therapy of the advanced disease.
Liposomal encapsulated doxorubicin shows better activity than conventional doxorubicin combined with reduced cardiotoxicity.
Weekly applied cytotoxic agents show a better toxicity profile and hence the cumulative dosis can be increased. It is expected that the combination of liposomal encapsulated doxorubicin with paclitaxel given weekly shows improved results in the therapy of metastatic breast cancer.
