Background: The development of synthetic taxanes targets at increasing solubility of the drug, improved clinical efficacy and reduced side-effects. We evaluated the sensitivity of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma cell lines to BMS-184476 and BMS-188797 in vitro.
Materials and methods: The effects of paclitaxel and the synthetic taxanes were tested on six recently established cell lines (3 oral cavity SCC, 3 laryngeal SCC) using the 96-well plate clonogenic assay. The IC50 values, corresponding to the mean inactivation dose, were obtained from the dose response curves.
Results: All tested cell lines were considerably more sensitive to both synthetic taxanes compared to paclitaxel. As a rule, the IC50 concentration for paclitaxel was 4-5.5 times higher than that of BMS-184476 or BMS-188797. The sensitivity to these drugs varied from cell line to cell line, and time lapse video microscopy showed a mitotic arrest with subsequent apoptosis after four hours with BMS-188797.
Conclusion: These results indicate that the synthetic taxanes could be useful clinically and warrant in vitro testing in combined modality models, like concurrent chemoradiation.