Chemotherapy combinations mean the use of two or more anticancer drugs to destroy the cancer cells. A lot of research has been carried out to study new combination of drugs for chemotherapy. As different individuals react differently to certain medicines, there are chances that not all the combination might work well with cancer patients.

The different chemotherapy combinations to cure breast cancer at an early stage are now being studied largely. According to a recent study, a new combination of chemotherapy drugs; Cytoxan and Taxotere works quite well when replaced with the standard Cytoxan and Adriamycin. It has been proved that Cytoxan and Taxotere work easy on the heart. Although the chemotherapy effectiveness is still being investigated, Cytoxan and Taxotere are used in the early stages of breast cancer where the risk of recurrence is quite high. Stage 1 breast cancer is an early stage of breast cancer. Chemotherapy combinations are the best method of treatment for stage 1 breast cancer.

Studies also show that tamoxifen and raloxifene, which are used for hormone therapies, cut the supply of estrogen to cancer tumors. This lowers the risk of developing breast cancer in women after menopause. According to studies, chemotherapy success rates are very high and increasing day by day.

In another study, it has been proved that if we increase the frequency of a particular medicine, it shows different effects. The New England Journal of Medicine issue in April 2009 indicated that Taxol, if given weekly, improved the survival rates of cancer patients along with nullifying the disease. However, Taxol given after every three weeks just showed improvement in the survival.

Taxol when given after Adriamycin and Cytoxan helped HER-2 positive or estrogen-receptor negative patients, whereas it is not very effective with tumors that were HER-2 negative and estrogen-receptor positive.

Drugs such as aromatase inhibitors - Arimidex (anastrozole), Aromasin (exemestane), and Femara (letrozole) are now being tested to find if they too can fight against estrogen-sensitive cancers. The drugs are presently used to avoid cancer recurrence in adjuvant chemotherapy.

Research is also being carried on dose-dense chemotherapy, which is increasing the dose of chemotherapy medications or giving the therapy often. As per the study, the treatment is given every two weeks compared to the usual three-week dose to check if this treatment works better to prevent the recurrence of cancer at a later stage. Clinical trials are still in the process of evaluating if dose-dense chemotherapy proves effective to stop cancer recurrence.

The patients who are participating in these clinical trials would recover faster than the other patients would. Although, there is a lot of risk involved with clinical trials the patients are under close observation all the time and so have an upper hand from the other cancer patients.