Herceptin Plus Taxol Highly Effective in
Low-Risk Breast Cancer
Herceptin
Plus Taxol Highly Effective in Low-Risk Breast Cancer
Dec. 11, 2013 — A remarkable 98.7 percent of
certain lower-risk breast cancer patients were cancer free for at least three
years after taking a combination of the drugs Herceptin and Taxol, a study has
found.
The study is the first major trial to examine
the Herceptin-Taxol
combination in patients who have a type of breast cancer with the
biology known as small,
node-negative, HER2+. Results were presented during the 2013 San Antonio
Breast Cancer Symposium.
"This is great news for patients and
their physicians," said Kathy Albain, MD, of Loyola University Medical
Center, who is one of the co-authors of the national multicenter study.
"This study identifies a new treatment option for this population of
patients that is highly effective and has minimal side effects." First
author is Sara Tolaney, MD, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
About 1 in 4 breast patients have HER2+ breast cancer,
meaning their cancer cells have a receptor protein on the surface known as HER2 (Human Epidermal growth
factor Receptor 2).
Herceptin is part of the well-established
standard-of-care for higher-risk HER2+ patients. But there currently is no
single standard treatment patients with the for lower-risk HER2+ biology. In
these patients, their
tumors are small and the cancer has not spread to lymph nodes. Some of
these patients currently are not receiving Herceptin, while others are being
treated with Herceptin
plus more toxic chemotherapy drugs.
The new study finds that an in-between
treatment -- Herceptin
plus a single chemotherapy drug Taxol -- is highly effective, with few adverse effects.
Of the 406 patients studied, only
3.2 percent experienced severe neuropathy and only 0.5 percent experienced symptoms of congestive heart failure, which resolved after they discontinued
Herceptin.
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