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 …read more

The wonder drug Herceptin is the primary treatment for HER2-positive breast cancer. The 25 -30 % of breast cancer patients with this class of tumor do not all respond to Herceptin.
However, better treatment options can be determined if breast cancer patients can be evaluated of how they would respond to Herceptin.
Research teams from Harvard and Yale Universities have been able to identify certain basal markers, growth factors and growth factor receptors in breast cancer patients that are expressed in the genes of Herceptin-resistant breast cancer patients.
The findings have been used by the team in the utilization of gene chips in profiling …read more