Two consecutive days of treatment with liposomal cisplatin in non-small cell lung cancer

Liposomal cisplatin (Lipoplatin) is a new agent, a cisplatin formulation that has been investigated in a number of studies and compared with cisplatin with respect to toxicity and effectiveness. It has been administered once weekly and in combination with a second agent, once every two weeks. The main outcome of the studies was that lipoplatin has no renal toxicity and is as equally effective as cisplatin. The present study investigated toxicity and effectiveness when lipoplatin is administered on two consecutive days, repeated every two weeks. Between January 2011 and November 2011, a total of 21 patients with histologically- or cytologically-confirmed non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were enrolled in the study. All but two patients, who had not been pretreated, had received one or two series of chemotherapy and some had undergone radiotherapy. Lipoplatin monotherapy was infused for 8 h the first and second days and repeated every 2 weeks with the aim of administering 6 cycles. The dose per day was 200 mg/m(2). Eight out of 21 (38.10%) patients had a partial response, 9 (42.86%) had stable disease and 4 (19.05%) had progressive disease. Results showed that there was no renal failure toxicity and no other adverse reactions apart from grade 1 myelotoxicity in only 2 patients who had been heavily pretreated, and grade 1 nausea/vomiting in 4 patients. Liposomal cisplatin is an agent with negligible toxicity and reasonably high effectiveness even when administered to pretreated patients with NSCLC.