London, May 29 (Inditop): Scientists have created a drug that launches a two-pronged attack on the most advanced form of aggressive breast cancer.
The combo of the wonder drug Herceptin with another used in chemotherapy could provide extra months to live to thousands of women, reports The Daily Express.
Thanks to the drug, 35 percent of women with incurable HER2-positive breast cancer – an aggressive form – saw their tumour shrink or the disease stabilise for at least six months.
The dual-hit, which acts like a Trojan horse, not only takes Herceptin’s antibody treatment directly into cancer cells, targeting the HER2 genes that cause growth, but the chemotherapy attacks the cells.
In final results from a trial of the combined drug, trastuzumab-DM1, on 112 women, a quarter saw their tumour shrink by at least 30 per cent.
Principal UK investigator, Dr David Miles, medical oncologist at Mount Vernon Hospital, in Northwood, Middlesex, said: “To see such efficacy with one treatment is unusual.”
