Bisphosphonates as anticancer drugs

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Abstract
The single most important advance in the last few years in the treatment of patients with osteolytic bone disease due to malignancy has been the widespread use of pamidronate; this drug has been used in patients with breast cancer metastatic to bone, and in patients with myeloma, with or without hypercalcaemia. However, data are now emerging which suggest that bisphosphonates have additional, and completely unanticipated, effects beyond those on bone resorption. Studies of the behaviour of human breast cancer cells that cause osteolytic bone disease in nude mice demonstrate that some bisphosphonates actually reduce tumour burden in bone, as well as reducing osteolysis. Two separate studies in a relatively small number of patients treated with clodronate have suggested that this bisphosphonate decreases tumour burden in bone. These preliminary findings have extremely important implications for the treatment of patients with advanced cancers affecting bone. It must now be questioned whether these effects ar...

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