Being diagnosed with cancer is a terrifying prospect that we would surely like to avoid at all costs.
Through lifestyle choices and healthy eating, we greatly improve our chances
of staying healthy and getting around this disease. But sometimes, whatever
we do, it's not enough.
Discovery of a new promising therapeutic method:
According to statistics, one in eight women, approximately 12%, are
diagnosed with breast cancer each year. With such frightening statistics, and
the side effects caused by current treatment methods such as chemotherapy,
promising new therapeutic options are still causing a stir within the medical
community as well as among patients.
If such a medical protocol has no significant side effects, even better. So what
would happen if it allowed women diagnosed with breast cancer to completely
ignore chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery, and eliminate the disease in just 11 days?
This is exactly the kind of medical breakthrough that was presented by
Professor Nigel Bundred at the 10th European Breast Cancer Conference in
Amsterdam. He and his colleagues recently discovered that HER2-positive
breast cancer responds to targeted therapies using a combination of
trastuzumab and lapatinib.
HER2-positive breast cancer is a type of cancer that has a large number of human epidermal growth factor (HER2) receptors on the surface of cancer cells that stimulate cell division and growth.
During her presentation of a clinical trial involving 257 women diagnosed with HER2-positive breast cancer, Bundred reported, "This has revolutionary potential because it allows us to identify a group of patients who, within 11 days , have seen their tumors disappear with anti-HER2 therapy alone and may not require subsequent chemotherapy. This offers an opportunity to tailor the treatment for each woman. "
The trial had two components: the first included a control group of 130 women
randomized to receive no preoperative treatment, or only trastuzumab
(Herceptin), or lapatinib (Tyverb) only, for 11 days after diagnosis and before
surgery.
However, evidence has quickly emerged in other trials that using a
combination of lapatinib and trastuzumab to treat HER2-positive breast cancer
is much more effective. In response, the research team modified the second
part of their trial and involved 127 women, who were expected to receive only
trastuzumab, lapatinib and trastuzumab.
Tumor tissue samples were taken at the first biopsy of each participant, which
was performed to confirm the cancer diagnosis, and another after the
surgery. The samples were then analyzed to see if the Ki67 protein (a marker
of cell proliferation) had dropped, or if cell death (apoptosis) had increased by
30 percent or more.
The results of the second part of the study showed that a quarter of women
with HER2-positive breast cancer, who received the combined treatment for 11 days before surgery and chemotherapy, experienced a significant narrowing of tumors, and in some, the tumors have completely disappeared. Even women with stage 2 cancer, where the cancer had already spread to the lymph nodes, responded positively to combination therapy.