Trastuzumab + Chemotherapy = Improved Breast Cancer Survival
In women with operable HER-2 positive breast cancer, the combination treatment of the antibody trastuzumab and chemotherapy has been found to improve survival.
Such were the findings of the meta-analysis of 5 trials involving more than 13,000 women with operable breast cancer, recently reported at the ESMO Conference Lugano by Issa Dahabreh from University of Athens:
The results showed that combining trastuzumab with chemotherapy results in a -34% reduction in mortality and a 38% increase in disease-free survival. Those survival benefits were accompanied by decreases in the risk of both locoregional and distant recurrences of the cancer.
Taken together, these results confirm that the administration of trastuzumab in combination with chemotherapy should be the standard choice for the treatment of women with HER2 positive early stage disease, especially those with limited cardiovascular comorbidities.”
Trastuzumab is a monoclonal antibody directly targeting part of the HER2 tyrosine kinase receptor.
Read the full report.
Tags: chemotherapy, HER-2-positive-breast-cancer, trastuzumabRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Breast cancer, ~ Anti-cancer treatments ~
1 opinion for Trastuzumab + Chemotherapy = Improved Breast Cancer Survival
Gregory D. Pawelski
Sep 15, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Monoclonal antibodies like Herceptin are enormous. Very large molecules don’t have a convenient way of getting access to the large majority of cells. Plus, there is multicellular resistance, the drug affecting only the cells on the outside may not kill these cells if they are in contact with cells on the inside, which are protected from the drug. The cells may pass small molecules back and forth.
Exciting results have come from studies of multitargeted tyrosine kinase inhibitors, small molecules that act on multiple receptors in the cancerous cells, like Tykerb and Sutent. So maybe that is why Tykerb may be better than Herceptin? Each of these new targeted drugs are not for everybody, just like the conventional cancer drugs are not for everybody. Even when the disease is the same type, different patients’ tumors respond differently to the same agents.
Pre-testing patient tumors can provide predictive information to help physicians choose between chemotherapy drugs, eliminate potentially ineffective drugs from treatment regimens and assist in the formulation of an optimal therapy choice for each patient. This can spare the patient from unnecessary toxicity associated with ineffective treatment and offers a better chance of tumor response resulting in progression-free survival.
Identifying patients with resistant neoplasms may not only spare them toxicity but may prolong their lives, by sparing them from the life shortening effects of ineffective chemotherapy. Patients would certainly have a better chance of success had their cancer been chemo-sensitive rather than chemo-resistant, where it is more apparent that chemotherapy improves the survival of patients, and where identifying the most effective chemotherapy would be more likely to improve survival above that achieved with empiric chemotherapy.
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