Anticancer activity of the combination of cisplatin and etoposide in endometrial cancer-bearing nude mice

We investigated the efficacy of the combination of cisplatin and etoposide in endometrial cancer using mice bearing human endometrial cancer. Cisplatin (5 mg/kg) plus etoposide (10 mg/kg) caused markedly greater inhibition of the growth of medium-sized tumors (96.1% inhibition) than cisplatin alone at the same dose. Similarly, the combination of cisplatin (7.5 mg/kg) and etoposide (10 mg/kg) produced a significantly higher complete remission rate in small tumors, compared with cisplatin alone at the same dose (82.6% vs 35.3%, P less than 0.01). As a single agent, etoposide had almost no inhibitory effect on tumor growth and produced a considerably lower complete remission rate. Total platinum and etoposide concentrations in serum and tumor tissue were unaltered when these agents were used either singly or in combination. Our results suggested that combination cisplatin-etoposide therapy was synergistic against endometrial cancer.