Herceptin Best for Certain Breast Cancer Patients, Study Says

Herceptin is the best drug treatment for a type of breast cancer called HER2-positive and should remain the standard of care for that type of tumor, according to new findings from a long-term clinical trial. HER2-positive breast cancers tend to be more aggressive than other types of breast cancer, according to the Mayo Clinic… Heart safety was rated good for both groups of patients. And there was no difference in the rate of cancer spreading from the breast to the brain, study co-chair Dr. Edith Perez, director of the Breast Cancer Translational Genomics Program at the Mayo Clinic in Florida, said in a Mayo news release.

Analysis of more than 8,000 women who participated in the world’s largest study of two treatments for HER2-positive breast cancer reinforces other findings from the clinical trial showing that trastuzumab (Herceptin) should remain the standard of care for this cancer, says a Mayo Clinic researcher. This study, being presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2014 Congress in Madrid, reveals that when used as a single HER2-targeted therapy in addition to standard chemotherapy, trastuzumab offers a better outcome than does lapatinib (Tykerb), says Edith A. Perez, M.D., deputy director at large, Mayo Clinic Cancer Center and director of the Breast Cancer Translational Genomics Program at Mayo Clinic in Florida.

A Mayo Clinic news release on this topic was covered in Healthday,  US News and World Report and other sources the week of 10/02/2014.