In what's being described as the greatest breakthrough in breast cancer in 30 years, researchers have published a study that shows women who receive chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer of type HER-2 positive (about 20 percent of all breast cancers) followed by treatment with the drug Herceptin show a 46 percent lower rate of cancer recurrence. Unfortunately, the drug is not cheap -- a year's supply can run as much as $60,000. Studies from international clinical trials of 5000 patients from 39 countries confirmed similar results found in two 3000 patient trials in the U.S., prompting the Australian Cancer Council to call for Herceptin's listing on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which would make the drug more cheaply available via federal subsidization.
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Herceptin dramatically cuts chance of breast cancer relapse
In what's being described as the greatest breakthrough in breast cancer in 30 years, researchers have published a study that shows women who receive chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer of type HER-2 positive (about 20 percent of all breast cancers) followed by treatment with the drug Herceptin show a 46 percent lower rate of cancer recurrence. Unfortunately, the drug is not cheap -- a year's supply can run as much as $60,000. Studies from international clinical trials of 5000 patients from 39 countries confirmed similar results found in two 3000 patient trials in the U.S., prompting the Australian Cancer Council to call for Herceptin's listing on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which would make the drug more cheaply available via federal subsidization.
Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. There are a number of other issues on the subject of Herceptin. Take notice that these kind of individual, targeted oral drugs are "added" to the repertoire of chemotherapy mixtures a cancer patient is already taking, "instead of" taking them alone?
The Katharina Pachmann, et al study in the May 2005 issue of Oncology News International reports about neoadjuvant Taxol chemotherapy causing the release of cancer cells into the blood, I'm not so sure that Herceptin is taking care of what Taxol never accomplished in the first place. It has been shown that Herceptin treatment was to reduce circulating tumor cells in patients. However, does it?
A study from Dana Farber Cancer Institute identified as many as 34% central nervous system metastases in women who receive Herceptin therapy for metastatic breast carcinoma. Patients receiving Herceptin as first-line therapy frequently develop brain metastases while responding to or stable on Herceptin.
Herceptin though, is only for the estimated 20% of breast cancer women at risk for recurrence. However, gene expression assays are panels of markers that can predict the likelihood of cancer recurrence in various populations. By testing the gene expression markers of a patient, oncologists can identify those patients unlikely to benefit from chemotherapy from those that would, saving the other 80% of cancer patients the added expense, suffering and even death from having to take chemotherapy.
Whether a patient would benefit from adjuvant therapy depends on two things: (1) whether the tumor is "destined" to come back in the first place and (2) whether the tumor is sensitive to drugs which might be used to keep it from coming back.
What a cancer patient would like ideally, is to know whether they would benefit from chemotherapy (gene expression assays). If so, which active drugs have the highest probability of working (cell culture assays), and are relatively non-toxic in a given patient (pharmacogenomic testing).
Sources:
Human Genome Project Information
Human Tumor Assay Journal
ACGT, Inc.
Posted at 7:57PM on Oct 21st 2005 by Gregory D. Pawelski
1. Is so hard to comment on this blog.
Altough we are younger o older this disease cut a lot of lifes.
Is a big pain for me to see some of my family (uncle, ant) die because of this.
An is no medicine.
And how to encourage other persons?
Is so hard.
We should fight to have a healty life, to prevent this disease.
Posted at 11:09AM on Nov 2nd 2005 by Miki