[Hormonoresistant metastatic prostate cancer: analysis of two phase III clinical studies]

Until now, mitoxantrone was the standard drug for hormone resistant prostate cancer (HRPC). Docetaxel has shown more than 50% of biological response rate in HRPC in several phase II studies. Recently, two phase III studies comparing mitoxantrone and docetaxel were reported. In the view of the results of these studies, it is likely that we will change the usual treatment policy. First one , TAX 327, compared docetaxel 75 mg/m2 every 3 weeks, docetaxel 35 mg/m2 weekly and mitoxantrone 12 mg/m2 every 3 weeks. 1,006 patients were included, overall survival was better in the docetaxel arm than in the mitoxantrone arm (18.7 vs. 16.9 months; p = 0.009). The SWOG study compared docetaxel-estramustine and mitoxantrone-prednisone. 770 patients were included, the difference in overall survival was significantly in favor of the docetaxel arm (17.5 vs. 15.6 months; p = 0.02). These results shows that docetaxel is now the standard treatment of HRPC and the standard arm for future studies in this disease.