Bleomycin: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Bleomycin is a medicine sold in the U.S. under one brand. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Available as
- Injectable
- Sold as
- Blenoxane
- Prescription?
- Prescription only
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
- What the pharmacy pays
- about $793 for a 30-count supply — not your price
Every bleomycin product we track (1)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
Only one: Blenoxane.
How long bleomycin keeps
The date on a sealed pack is not the only one: some bleomycin labels start a second clock once the product is opened or mixed, as short as 24 hours.
Does bleomycin expire? The in-use limits and storage rules from its labelsBleomycin and breastfeeding
From LactMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s Drugs and Lactation Database — quoted, not rewritten.
Full LactMed record for bleomycin: levels in milk, effects in breastfed infants, and the drugs it would consider insteadMost sources consider breastfeeding to be contraindicated during maternal antineoplastic drug therapy. It might be possible to breastfeed safely during intermittent therapy with an appropriate period of breastfeeding abstinence. Although no data are available to determine an appropriate period to withhold breastfeeding, the drug's terminal half-life of 4 hours with normal kidney function suggests that withholding breastfeeding for at least 24 hours may be sufficient. This period may be longer in patients with impaired kidney function. Chemotherapy may adversely affect the normal microbiome and chemical makeup of breastmilk. Women who receive chemotherapy during pregnancy are more likely to have difficulty nursing their infant.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, record revised June 21, 2021. LactMed states its information is not a substitute for professional judgement.
What people report to the FDA about bleomycin
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 2,887 reports naming bleomycin, and the FDA flagged 98% of those reports as serious. The effects reported most often — leaving out reports about overdose, misuse or the condition being treated, which dominate the raw list for common medicines:
- febrile neutropenia287 reports
- pulmonary toxicity166 reports
- neutropenia154 reports
- pyrexia123 reports
- acute myeloid leukaemia111 reports
- nausea105 reports
- sepsis105 reports
- vomiting105 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean bleomycin caused the effect — anyone can file one, and many describe people taking several medicines for several conditions. Crucially there is no denominator: FAERS does not record how many people took the drug, so these counts cannot be turned into “X% of patients” — a bigger number often just means a more widely used or more talked-about drug. Duplicates exist, and publicity drives reporting. For what is actually established, read the FDA label section above.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved July 25, 2026.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
Can you take bleomycin with other medicines?
It depends on the medicine. We check it against the FDA labels rather than guessing: our interaction checker searches each drug's own label for the other and quotes what it says, naming the section it came from. Run bleomycin against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
What forms does bleomycin come in?
Across the brands we track, bleomycin is currently marketed as injectable, per the FDA's National Drug Code Directory. Each form is dosed differently — follow the label for the exact product you were prescribed.
Is there a generic bleomycin?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled bleomycin product. That does not always mean none exists — it means none appears under a generic name in the FDA data we track. Ask your pharmacist.
Cite this page
- APA
- pharmaranks. (2026, July 24). Bleomycin: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/bleomycin
- MLA
- “Bleomycin: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/bleomycin.
We summarise public FDA and NIH sources — for a clinical claim, cite the primary source we link to as well.
Sources: FDA openFDA drug label, National Drug Code Directory, and Enforcement (recall) database. This page reproduces public FDA data and is not medical advice. Dosing is set by your prescriber.
Read the full FDA label for bleomycin on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.