Background: Taxanes are presently widely employed for the medical treatment of cancer. However, despite the huge clinical success, these agents exhibit clinical problems related to poor drug solubility, toxicity and, in particular, drug resistance.
Objective: To identify the critical points related to the process of development of novel taxanes.
Methods: Publicly available data on the paclitaxel and docetaxel analogues, which have entered a clinical development phase in the last 2 years have been taken into consideration. The development involved novel formulations of paclitaxel and novel chemical entities. For each agent in each category the development phase is analysed and a synthetic comment for each category is included.
Results/conclusions: Despite all the efforts, until now clinical success with the new development of taxanes has been limited. Moreover, the expected clinical introduction of epothilones could further restrict the space for development of novel taxanes. Despite these facts, some interesting concepts emerged during the process of development and could lead to successful drugs in the forthcoming years.