Melanoma that has spread to other areas of the body is a very difficult cancer to treat successfully. It usually does not respond well to chemotherapy. Sadly, those diagnosed with metastatic melanoma survive only about a year after diagnosis.

The combination of Taxol (paclitaxel) with carboplatin, added to an agent that prevents the growth of blood vessels called bevacizumab has been shown to significantly delay the spread of tumors in patients with advanced melanoma. A Phase II clinical trial showed that tumor growth was delayed by almost six months; typically these cancers begin to start spreading again in about eight weeks.

Dr. Domingo Perez, M.D., the lead author of the study says "The clinical benefit may seem small, but in the world of melanoma where there is very little progress, this is certainly a strong indication that the combination of chemotherapy with an antiangiogenic agent may be a valid treatment strategy for these patients."

Among all sorts of news circulating as a result of the recent breast cancer conference in San Antonio, Texas is a report about an international study that has many touting Canadian chemotherapy treatments as the best therapies around -- even better than the commonly-used AC/T cocktail (doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide followed by paclitaxel) .

The winning Canadian drug combinations -- EC/T (epirubicin and cyclophosphamide followed by paclitaxel) and CEF (cyclophosphamide, epirubicin, and fluorouracil) -- are reportedly more effective at preventing breast cancer recurrence than AC/T.

About 2,104 women in Canada and the United States participated in this international study. All had undergone surgery to remove a tumor and were receiving chemotherapy. The women, aged 60 and under, all had cancer that had spread to their lymph nodes, indicating the disease was likely to spread.

The women received one of three treatments -- AC/T, EC/T, or CEF -- and results revealed that for every 100 women who received EC/T or CEF, 10 women would suffer a recurrence. For every 100 women who received AC/T, 15 women would relapse.

The lead researcher of the study says it's too soon to say whether EC/T and CEF are more effective in the long-term. So participants will be followed for some time while researchers will try to make sense of their initial findings. In the meantime, they suspect AC/T will continue to be widely used because of its lesser side effects.

In a Phase III trial involving 878 lung cancer patients, the drug bevacizumab, known as Avastin, increased the overall survival rate to 35 percent when combined with the chemotherapy drugs paclitaxel and carboplatin. Patients who were given paclitaxel and carboplatin without Avastin had a 15 percent chance of responding to treatment.

Two months ago, the Food and Drug Administration approved Avastin as a first-line treatment for patients with inoperable, locally advanced, recurrent or metastatic non-squamous, non-small cell lung cancer. Avastin works by stopping the formation of blood vessels that feed oxygen and nutrients needed for tumor growth. Because the drug is a targeted therapy, in that it leaves healthy tissue alone while going after cancer cells, some of the traditional side-effects from conventional chemotherapy, such as hair loss, nausea, or vomiting, are avoided.

According to Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UT Southwestern Chief of Hematology/Oncology's Dr. Joan Schiller, "Twenty years ago, we thought no treatment could help patients with advanced lung cancer. Ten years ago, we found that chemotherapy could improve survival of these patients. Now, we are finding out that this very unique drug called Avastin can also help improve survival even more. Avastin is the first of this very exciting family of drugs to be approved for lung cancer, and there are several other drugs of this type under development which may prove to work even better."

Metastatic breast cancer patients who have stable disease following treatment of anthracycline plus Taxol (paclitaxel) might not be receiving any benefit if they are receiving maintenance Taxol after first-line treatment.

It seems that it might not do any good. A study was done that showed the two groups, one with the maintenance Taxol and the one without, having outcomes that had no differences. Neither group showed any difference in progression free survival.

The study was based on 255 women that had stable disease. It could be a good idea to mention this article that was in the Journal of Clinical Oncology to your oncologist if you are receiving maintenance Taxol for metastatic breast cancer.