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UT Study Finds Herceptin Helpful in Fight Against Breast Cancer

Posted on: Tuesday, 3 May 2005, 09:00 CDT

Here is some good news for women battling breast cancer.

When the drug Herceptin was added to standard breast cancer treatment, the risk a woman's breast cancer would return dropped from 30 to about 15 percent, according to research recently released by the National Institutes of Health.

"There is no doubt it will save more lives. I am very excited," said Dr. Mohammad Jahanzeb, University of Tennessee Health Science Center chief of hematology-oncology and interim director of the UT Cancer Institute. Jahanzeb has been involved in Herceptin research since the 1990s and directs the local arm of an international study involving Herceptin. Results from that study aren't complete.

These latest results are from two studies that involved more than 3,300 female breast cancer patients. In most cases, the cancer had spread to their lymph nodes.

After surgery to remove their tumor, the women were randomly assigned to receive standard treatment with a variety of anti- cancer drugs or standard treatment plus the drug marketed as Herceptin.

Those whose treatment included Herceptin were 52 percent less likely to have their cancer return within five years.

Jahanzeb said Herceptin is only an option for the roughly 20 to 30 percent of breast cancer patients whose cancer cells make too much of a protein known as HER-2. That translates into 10,000 to 15,000 women annually. The drug targets the protein and so slows or stops the growth of cells making too much HER-2 protein.

This year an estimated 211,240 American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and about 40,110 will die from the disease. It remains the most commonly diagnosed cancer in American women and the leading cancer killer.

- Mary Powers: 529-2383

Source: Commercial Appeal, The

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