Breast cancer drug Herceptin has been approved in Europe for use with hormonal therapy for postmenopausal patients with HER2 and hormone receptor positive metastatic disease.

Herceptin, made by Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG, is already approved in Europe for early and metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer.

This new approval is based on data from an international late stage clinical trial showing the combination of Herceptin with hormonal therapy doubled the median progression-free survival time.

An Arkansas woman claiming the hormone replacement drug Prempro caused her breast cancer just won her legal battle against Wyeth, the maker of the drug.

Mary Daniel was awarded $1 million in compensatory damages thanks to a Philadelphia jury decision stating Wyeth acted with malice or reckless disregard for selling Prempro -- the drug Daniels took for 16 months to relieve hot flashes. The next step for Daniels, whose husband will receive $500,000, is a hearing to consider punitive damages.

Wyeth's lawyer argues that Prempro -- a combination of estrogen and progestin -- is still prescribed to women and suggests Daniel's breast cancer was caused by other risk factors, such as family history of the disease.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer. So any bit of progress on the pancreatic cancer front is a big deal. And researchers are happy to report they've found a chemotherapy drug that can help patients who have received surgery prevent a return of the disease for a longer period of time.

In a German study, participants who received Gemzar, or gemcitabine, lived an average of 13.4 months without their cancers coming back. Participants who did not receive the drug lived without the disease for 6.9 months. While the findings of this study may seem modest, they really are quite encouraging because pancreatic cancer is such a rapid killer, and patients with this disease have the worst chances of recovery.

This study, published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, brings hope for the mere 20 percent of pancreatic cancer patients who are candidates for surgery. While surgery is the best hope for a cure, the disease still returns in the majority of cases -- so Gemzar is surely worth a shot.

It should be noted that some study authors report financial ties to Gemzar drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co. Researchers, however, report the firm had no influence in design or data interpretation.