Interview Record With Dr. Wang From PUMCH

Q: Is taxol a common medicine in cancer treatment?

A: The ratio of taxol is relatively high, generally. It has a wide range of application including treating cancer in head, esophageal, stomach, bone, prostate and pancreas. It can almost cover all kinds of cancer except intestinal cancer. However, this kind of treatment is a common chemical therapy, which may cause many side effects including nausea, hair loss, and low leukocyte level because taxol is a cell-cycle-specific medicine and it can also hurt other normally active cells besides cancer cells. Now we sometimes lean to use targeted drug to treat cancer and this therapy is more effective with less side effects.

Q: How is the application of traditional therapy and modern therapy? Will traditional therapy be replaced?

A: The development of a new drug needs a series of clinical experiments. Many united institutes are working on it. And after the results of experiments examined by each countries repeatedly, the new drug will be recorded into guideline and the old one would be set aside if the new drug has better function with less side effects. But for cancer in head and neck, the process of developing new drug is relatively slow, so its treatment is mainly traditional.

Q: What’s the superiority of taxol compared with former medicines?

A: There is no medicine always a better choice. For different cancer there are different treatment plans and different medicines. We need to choose appropriate medicines based on guideline, clinical statistics and experience in cancer cases. The most important matter in cancer treatment is curative effect, and then side effects. But as for side effects, we can take some measurement to reduce it. Of course, drugs which are effective with less effect is ideal.

Q: Is taxol therapy expensive?

A: The cost is continuously decreasing. Now there is competition between domestic and imported taxol and there is no intrinsic difference between these taxols. They worked both well. But imported taxol is much more expensive. Generally, for a course of treatment, it takes 3000 or so CNY using domestic drugs while using imported takes more than 10000 CNY. And a common cancer patient needs about 6 courses of treatment.

Q: What’s the strategies in taxol administration?

A: It’s relatively complex to use this medicine. To guarantee the performance of taxol and keep its form, we will add some excipient when preparation. But sometimes these excipient can cause allergy. As a result, some anti-allergic medicine will be used .

Q: Is taxol used to treat some other illness?

A: Nope, maybe. By now I only know it treating cancer.

Q: Does taxol has some substitutions, which may be more curative or have less side effects?

A: Yes, there are also docetaxoel, gemcitabine, vinorelbine. Not everyone suits taxol treatment. For example, because of the affect on myocardium, some people can not take taxol; and people allergic to hormone also cannot be treated by taxol for hormone would be applied before it. So we should treat appropriately based on specific conditions. In more time targeted drug is a better choice.

Q: Do you think there would be improvement in taxol treatment?

A: People will tend to use targeted drugs and immunologic therapy in the future. And now many cancer have their own targeted drugs. But for most patients, they can’t afford it and can’t check his or her target. In these cases, we still choose traditional treatment. So maybe traditional therapy would be obsolete in some day, but won’t be substituted soon.