Herceptin® Combined With Chemotherapy Improves Disease-Free Survival for Patients With Early-Stage Breast Cancer

National Cancer Institute
U.S. National Institutes of Health
April 25, 2005
http://www.cancer.gov/newscenter/pressreleases/HerceptinCombination2005

Results from two large randomized clinical trials for patients with HER-2 positive invasive breast cancer show that those patients with early-stage breast cancer who received Herceptin® (trastuzumab) in combination with chemotherapy had a significant decrease in risk for breast cancer recurrence compared with patients who received the same chemotherapy without trastuzumab. Patients are considered "HER-2 positive" if their cancer cells "overexpress," or make too much of, a protein called HER-2, which is found on the surface of cancer cells. Trastuzumab slows or stops the growth of these cells, and it is only used to treat cancers that overexpress the HER-2 protein. Approximately 20 precent to 30 percent of breast cancers overexpress HER-2. These tumors tend to grow faster and are generally more likely to recur than tumors that do not overproduce HER-2.

The clinical trials were sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and conducted by a national network of researchers.