In a new lawsuit filed in California on Sept. 12, 2018, several plaintiffs claim that Taxotere chemo for breast cancer caused them to have permanent hair loss. The twelve plaintiffs are breast cancer survivors and residents of California.

The Taxotere lawsuit is brought against the manufacturers and distributors of the chemo for breast cancer and include the Sanofi-Aventis U.S. Services Inc. and related companies, the McKesson Corp., Sandoz Inc., Accord Healthcare Inc. and up to 30 defendants yet to be named.

What is Taxotere and Its History?

Taxotere is a chemo for breast cancer that is part of a drug family known as taxanes and are derived from the varieties of the yew plant. A less toxic version of Taxotere known as Taxol—also used in chemo for breast cancer—was approved for the American market as early as 1992. Bristol-Myers Squibb was the holder of this primary drug competitor.

According to the lawsuit’s narrative, the initial application for Taxotere was rejected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee because of its increased potency over Taxol in 1994. The committee felt more safety testing needed to be completed.

Nevertheless, Taxotere chemo for breast cancer was approved with some caveats in 1996. The recommendations were that it be reserved for patients with very advanced cases of breast cancer that had either spread or remained localized but that had remained unaffected by less toxic chemo for breast cancer treatments.

As outlined in the lawsuit, Sanofi-Aventis started to promote Taxotere to the FDA for other uses. They allegedly claimed superior efficacy over Taxol to the drug oversight agency by citing data from self-sponsored clinical safety studies.

These allegedly false and misleading claims extended to aggressive advertising campaigns that eventually led the FDA to send a warning letter to the drug company in 2009. The warning letter asked them to cease and desist with citing unsupported data.

Alopecia Side Effects

Chemo for breast cancer has been known to produce temporary but not necessarily permanent hair loss. The plaintiffs allege they were not given a reason to expect that their hair loss would be permanent.

The defendants in this lawsuit stand accused of engaging in misleading marketing campaigns which hid the side effect of alopecia with Taxotere. The defendants, according to the case, knew or should have known about the potential for the increased toxicity to produce this unfortunate and disfiguring condition.

The plaintiffs say that they were not warned of this possibility or they would have chosen a different course of treatment. They feel that the companies involved fraudulently concealed information they should have had access to when making a vital decision about their health.

This Taxotere Lawsuit is Case No. 2:18-cv-08581-JTM-MBN in the Superior Court of the State of California in and for Alameda County, Unlimited Jurisdiction.