第12届欧洲癌症大会公布乳腺癌化疗新方案

　　全球与会专家最多的癌症大会——第12届欧洲癌症大会于2003年9月21日在丹麦首都哥本哈根开幕，大约一万名来自世界各地的临床医生及基础研究领域的科学家在此进行了为期5天的交流。

　　本届大会上专家的专题演讲，以及研究进展报告摘要，均反映了各国在癌症基因研究、诊疗方面的学术信息及最新临床结果，倍受人们的关注。据世界卫生组织最新数据，每年全球约新增癌症患者1000万人，其中包括530万男性和470万女性。仅去年一年，全世界就有620余万人死于癌症，列男性癌症死因首位的是肺癌，而女性则为乳腺癌。

　　以下为美国伊利诺斯州芝加哥市西北大学罗伯特·H·卢瑞综合癌症中心乳房肿瘤内科主任、菲恩堡医学院内科学副教授 William J. Gradishar, MD. 公布的乳腺癌化疗新方案：

Adding Capecitabine to Taxanes Improves Outcomes for Patients With Metastatic Breast Cancer

Narrator: Combination therapy with capecitabine plus docetaxel leads to a notable improvement in survival for patients with metastatic breast cancer when compared to treatment with a higher dose of docetaxel alone. These results from a large, pivotal breast cancer trial led by Dr. Joyce O’Shaughnessy correlate well with a new trial evaluating the combination of capecitabine and paclitaxel. Capecitabine is marketed under the tradename Xeloda, and docetaxel and paclitaxel are also known as Taxotere and Taxol, respectively.

Dr. William Gradishar, associate professor in the Department of Medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and director of Breast Medical Oncology at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, explained the clinical significance of the capecitabine-docetaxel trial results.

Dr. Gradishar: And what that trial demonstrated, to some surprise, was that you enhance the response rate with the combination of Taxotere and Xeloda, you increase the overall survival, and this was over a drug that as a single agent we think is very effective. So the combination actually remarkably enough improved overall survival, which is quite unique when you think back to a variety of metastatic trials that have been conducted over the last decade and a half, two decades. Rarely do we see convincing evidence that overall survival improves.

Narrator: Dr. Gradishar says the rationale for combining the oral fluoropyrimidine capecitabine with taxanes is based on both preclinical and clinical work. Earlier preclinical work showed that combining a taxane with capecitabine led