Preclinical and Clinical Studies on the Use of Platinum Complexes for Breast Cancer Treatment

Platinum complexes such as cisplatin and carboplatin are widely used in todays cancer chemotherapy but not in the present therapy of breast cancer, the most frequent epithelial malignancy among women. As platinum compounds display high antitumoral efficacy against several breast cancer cell lines in-vitro they may be an interesting option for future clinical therapy of this disease. On the preclinical stage hormonally active and tissue selective platinum anticancer drugs have been investigated. Clinical trials on established platinum drugs (mainly cisplatin and carboplatin) showed that they can be efficient cytostatics for breast cancer therapy, if patients are carefully selected and suitable combination regimens (e.g. including taxanes) are administered. This review covers the latest findings about new platinum complexes in preclinical studies on the use against breast cancer as well as the outcome of the most relevant clinical trials.