"A major clinical advance against breast cancer" is how Dr John Crown, consultant medical oncologist at St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin has described Taxotere. The new drug has been shown in phase II clinical trials to have the highest overall response rate ever reported 56 per cent as a single agent in the treatment of advanced breast cancers which are resistant to the most common available treatments. "More than half of the women who have failed other therapies respond, meaning they have tumour shrinkage and often an improvement in symptoms," says Dr Crown. Irish women are among the first in Europe to benefit from the drug, which was clinically tested here before being approved for use last November.