The Anthracycline Antineoplastic Drugs

PERHAPS no family of chemotherapeutic agents has been so rapidly accepted as a major therapeutic tool in treating patients with cancer as have the anthracyclines. Since the first clinical trials of doxorubicin and daunorubicin little more than a decade ago, these drugs have been extensively studied alone and in combination, and they now have a major role in the effective treatment of acute leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphomas, breast cancer, Hodgkin's disease, and sarcomas.The successful use of these drugs has been hampered by conventional toxicities (hematopoietic suppression, nausea and vomiting, and alopecia) as well as unique toxicities (cardiomyopathy); these problems have . . .