The CancerWeb Report, What's New In Cancer: April, 1996
AIDS-Related Tumors

• "Stealth liposomes" and chemotherapy of Kaposi's sarcoma - Chemotherapy of AIDS-related Kaposi's sarcoma is limited by severe side-effects and limited efficacy. An international study group from Australia, Germany and the UK made use of "stealth" liposomes in which polyethylene glycol surface groups prevent the foreign liposomes from being recognized by those cells (the reticuloendothelial cells) designed to scavenge for foreign matter such as liposomes. This prolongs the time drugs contained within the liposomes can continue to circulate in the blood. These stealth liposomes contained doxorubicin. Of 238 patients that were studied, 6% had a complete, and 74% a partial response, while disease was stabilized in 19%, when patients were given a little over two cycles of treatment. Only ten patients had to discontinue treatment because of severe side-effects, but more than half had reduced white blood cell counts at some point. (Goebel, Br J Cancer 73:989, 1996)