Taxol: a review of its preclinical in vivo antitumor activity

Taxol has been demonstrated in numerous laboratories worldwide to have broad-spectrum antitumor activity against many tumor models. The susceptible tumors include murine leukemias and solid tumors, and human solid tumor xenografts. The initial findings of taxolʼs ineffectiveness against most distal site tumor models was probably a consequence of the insolubility of taxol in nearly all the vehicles used in those early studies. On the occasions when an ethanol-based vehicle was used to dissolve taxol, substantial distal site antitumor activity was observed. Although no definitive schedule dependency data have evolved, once-a-day or every-other-day i.v. injections for several treatments have proved to be reproducibly effective in stringent s.c. tumor models. Attempts to discern a therapeutically synergistic cytotoxic drug combination was made on two occasions without success. In the manner evaluated, taxol plus either adriamycin, cisplatin, cyclophosphamide or etoposide (VP-16) were not meaningfully more efficacious than the more effective drug in each of those combination settings.