Researchers involved in a multicenter trial have shown that the addition of axitinib to Taxotere (docetaxel) improves outcomes of patients with metastatic breast cancer compared to Taxotere alone. The details of this study were presented at the 2007 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.  

Axitinib is an oral tyrosine kinase inhibitor and selective inhibitor of VEGFR 1, 2, 3 that has shown activity in lung, thyroid and possibly pancreatic cancer. The current study evaluated the addition of axitinib to Taxotere for the initial treatment of 168 patients with metastatic breast cancer. Patients were randomly allocated to receive Taxotere with or without oral axitinib. More than half the patients had received adjuvant chemotherapy. The median number of cycles of treatment was seven. The response rate was 40% in the group receiving axitinib compared to 23% for those receiving Taxotere plus placebo. The median time to tumor progression was 8.2 months in the axitinib group and 7 months in the Taxotere alone group. The axitinib group had increased toxicities including neutropenia, fatigue, stomatitis and hypertension. These authors concluded that axitinib had promising anti-tumor activity for patients with breast cancer. 

Comments: Axitinib appears to have a wide spectrum of activity including breast, lung and thyroid and possibly pancreatic cancer. Follow-up studies will be of major interest.

Reference:  Rugo HS, Stopeck A, Joy AA, et al. A randomized, double-blind Phase II study of the oral tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) axitinib (AG-013736) in combination with docetaxel (DOC) compared to DOC plus placebo (PL) in metastatic breast cancer (MBC). Proceedings from the American Society of Clinical Oncology Conference. Chicago,IL. 2007. Abstract # 1003.

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