‘Stunning’ good news for treatment of breast cancer

Cancer researchers today published results showing one of the most dramatic advances in breast cancer treatment in decades. The data found t...

Cancer researchers today published results showing one of the most dramatic advances in breast cancer treatment in decades. The data found that the drug Herceptin reduced by half the risk that women with a fast-growing type of tumor would experience a relapse.

Two studies, done mostly in the US and Europe, focused on the 15-25% of patients with a gene mutation known as HER2-positive, which makes their breast cancers particularly aggressive and resistant to treatment.

One in three of these women relapse, and most of those die. But when Herceptin was given to women with early-stage HER2-positive cancer after surgery, and combined with standard chemotherapy agents, their cancer was far less likely to return.

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Herceptin, which women take for a year, is an antibody that attaches itself to the HER2 gene on tumours, inhibiting the tumour’s ability to grow.

The success of Herceptin showed the promise of a new approach to cancer treatment, which identifies specific genetic mutations in different types of cancer and develops targeted therapies.

‘‘The results are simply stunning,’’ a leading oncologist, Dr Gabriel Hortobagyi of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, wrote in an editorial accompanying the studies in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Another breast-cancer specialist, Dr Harold Burstein of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, said: ‘‘For our generation of researchers, this is the most dramatic reduction in risk we’ve seen with treatment for breast cancer’’ and that the results ‘‘establish a new standard of treatment.’’

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The findings were so significant that the clinical trials were stopped early, and women in the control group were offered Herceptin. They had early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer, meaning that it has not spread from their breast and lymph nodes. — (NYT)

The India angle

	• Breast cancer is No 1 cancer among women in India with 75000 new cases every year • Every 13 minutes, breast cancer claims a life • Over a lifetime, one in 22 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer • P K Jhulka, Professor of Oncology, AIIMS: In 2003, we had first publication in Clinical Oncology that together with chemotherapy, Herceptin can prevent metastatic breast cancer—cancer which spreads to other organs. Our study showed than in 50% cases, cancer did not spread. But it works if tumours have HER2 receptors present in only 25-30% cancers. It needs FDA approval • Expensive drug. Monthly cost- 1 to 1.5 lakh rupees