Clinical pharmacokinetics of etoposide during 120 hours continuous infusions in solid tumours

Several developments have been proposed to improve cancer chemotherapy. They include: increased drug dosage (Powis, 1985); altered schedules of administration, such as prolonged infusions or multiple injections (Desoize & Garrett, 1989; Lokich et al., 1989; Clark & Slevin, 1987); and pharmacokinetic monitoring. Clinical pharmacokinetics enables the individual distribution and metabolism of drugs to be studied and the correlation of pharmacokinetic measurements with the drug's efficacy and toxicity. Here we report an analysis of the pharmacokinetics of Etoposide (VP 16) in 32 courses of treatment in 14 patients with solid tumours. Fourteen patients were the subjects of the pharmacokinetic studies, 10 had non-small cell lung cancer, one a nonHodgkin's lymphoma, one a breast cancer and in two patients the site of primary cancer was unknown. Seven patients responded to chemotherapy and seven did not respond. The pharmacokinetics were studied on 32 occasions. Creatinine clearance was measured during the first 24 h of infusion in the last 10 of these studies. Pharmacokinetics