Pharmacokinetic studies in lung cancer patients

Pharmacokinetic measurements to monitor and design cytotoxic treatments in cancer patients are being used more and more in order to optimize dosage and administration schedules. Ideally, information on drug concentrations over time should help reveal dose-response correlations. The cytotoxic drugs carmustine, etoposide, cyclophosphamide, iphosphamide, cis-diammineplatinum, Adriamycin (doxorubicin), and 4'-epi-Adriamycin have been monitored on different treatment programs of patients with advanced lung cancers. The collected experience emphasizes the many individual variables encountered in clinical practice complicating the effort of correlating pharmacokinetic data with clinical results. The examples, presented on the basis of the authors' experiences, pertain to drug instability, gastrointestinal absorption, enzymatic induction in the liver, drug interaction, and drug tissue concentrations.