Patients with advanced breast cancer drug that has not responded to other anti-cancer drugs may soon have a new treatment option. Ixabepilone (Ixempra, Bristol-Myers Squibb) has been approved for use in combination with another cancer agent, capecitabine (generic Xeloda, Roche), in patients who no longer benefit from treatment with an anthracycline (such as doxorubicin [Adriamycin, Bedford]) and a taxane (such as paclitaxel [Taxol, Bristol-Myers Squibb] or docetaxel [Taxotere, Sanofi-Aventis]). Ixabepilone is also approved for use alone in patients who no longer benefit from an anthracycline, a taxane, and capecitabine.

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A new model for calculating invasive breast cancer drug risk (the CARE model) gives improved estimates of the number of breast cancers that might develop in African-American women 50 to 79 years of age. An earlier model had been based primarily on data in Caucasian women.

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In a new study, Merck’s drug vorinostat (Zolinza), a histone deacetylase inhibitor also known as suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA), was able to cross the blood-brain barrier and reduce the development of large metastatic tumors in mice brains by 62% when compared with mice not receiving the drug. Vorinostat is approved to treat patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma.

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