Adriamycin and other anthracycline antibiotics under study in the United States.

Adriamycin is now firmly established as a drug with a very broad spectrum of antitumor activity. It has had a major impact on the therapy of sarcomas. The dose response effect in this tumor is steep and combinations which compromise the dose of adriamycin too greatly are showing inferior results. In lung and breast cancer combinations with adriamycin have been extensively tried. The FAC Regimen in breast cancer has given excellent results at the M.D. Anderson Hospital. The inclusion of adriamycin in combinations has had an impact in the poor prognosis histologies of non-Hodgkin's lymphomas. The CHOP regimen is one of the best developed to date for diffuse histiocytic lymphomas. In the leukemias adriamycin is probably equivalent to daunorubicin which has been more extensively used in this country. A new analog called Rubidazone has shown good activity in AML with a smooth induction and its incorporation into combination with Ara-C, vincristine and prednisone in a regimen called ROAP is being investigated. Adriamycin in complex with DNA has been clinically evaluated, but at this time, no advantage for this approach can be demonstrated.