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There’s a drug that came out after paclitaxel called albumin-bound paclitaxel. And the thing that inspired this was that tumors usually have more albumin binding proteins than the rest of your normal tissue. So when you bind albumin to paclitaxel, you hope that the delivery is more concentrated in the tumor. For this reason, the side effects of albumin bound paclitaxel are usually less than that of paclitaxel by itself. Except for neuropathy. The neuropathy can be worse with albumin bound paclitaxel. However, it can also be more reversible than the neuropathy seen with paclitaxel.
Because it’s better tolerated, you usually don’t need the same pre-medications that you get with paclitaxel and the incidence of what we call grade three or four myelosuppression, which means your counts fall quite a bit, especially your neutrophils that fight infections, that’s less. Significantly less when you have albumin bound paclitaxel versus paclitaxel. Now your physician doesn’t always have a choice on doing one or the other, because certain indications call for albumin bound paclitaxel, and certain indications call for paclitaxel specifically, and don’t let you exchange them. It depends on the tumor type as well as the way it was studied. And this is something you can talk to your physician about.
