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Impact of Tamoxifen on the Pharmacokinetics and Endocrine Effects of the Aromatase Inhibitor Letrozole in Postmenopausal Women with Breast Cancer¹

Departments of Biochemistry and Medicine, Royal Marsden Hospital, London SW3 6JJ, United Kingdom [M. D., S. R. D. J., I. E. S.]; Novartis Pharma AG Clinical Research, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland [C. P., J. A. V., H. G.]; Department of Clinical Oncology, Thomas/Guy House, Guy’s Hospital, London SE1 9RT, United Kingdom [D. W. M., S. J. H.]; and Novartis Pharma SA, 92500 Rueil-Malmaison, France [A. S.]

This study examined whether the addition of tamoxifen to the treatment regimen of patients with advanced breast cancer being treated with the aromatase inhibitor letrozole led to any pharmacokinetic or pharmacodynamic interaction. Twelve of 17 patients completed the core period of the trial in which 2.5 mg/day letrozole was administered alone for 6 weeks and in combination with 20 mg/day tamoxifen for the subsequent 6 weeks. Patients responding to treatment continued on the combination until progression of disease or any other reason for discontinuation. Plasma levels of letrozole were measured at the end of the 6-week periods of treatment with letrozole alone and the combination and once more between 4 and 8 months on combination therapy. No further measurements were done thereafter. Hormone levels were measured at 2-week intervals throughout the core period. Marked suppression of estradiol, estrone, and estrone sulfate occurred with letrozole treatment, and this was not significantly affected by the addition of tamoxifen. However, plasma levels of letrozole were reduced by a mean 37.6% during combination therapy (P < 0.0001), and this reduction persisted after 4–8 months of combination therapy. Letrozole is the first drug to be described in which this pharmacokinetic interaction occurs with tamoxifen. The mechanism is likely to be a consequence of an induction of letrozole-metabolizing enzymes by tamoxifen but was not further addressed in this study. It is possible that the antitumor efficacy of letrozole may be affected. Thus, sequential therapy may be preferable with these two drugs. It is not known whether tamoxifen interacts with other members of this class of drugs or with other drugs in combination.

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