Clinical and pharmacokinetic evaluation of trabectedin for the treatment of soft-tissue sarcoma

Introduction: Forty percent of patients with soft-tissue sarcoma (STS) will develop metastatic disease. Furthermore, up until 2007, doxorubicin and ifosfamide were the only drugs approved for the treatment of patients with advanced STS. In addition to the lack of available drugs on the market, there was a distinct lack of alternative options for patients who had first-line doxorubicin-based chemotherapy failure even though more than 40 different drugs have been investigated in this setting over the past three decades. In 2007, trabectedin received European approval for patients with advanced or metastatic STS who had either failed with or were unsuitable for first-line therapy with anthracyclines and ifosfamide, either sequentially or in combination.