foodconsumer.org: New drug shrinks breast cancer

New drug shrinks breast cancer
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admin on 12/13/2009 15:44:00
 
By Jimmy Downs
A new study presented at the 32nd annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast cancer
Symposium shows that a new antibody drug helped shrink or halt the growth of
metastatic HER2 positive breast cancer in many patients whose disease became
resistant to standard therapies.
Metastatic or advanced breast cancer and other cancers alike are non-stoppable
in the past. Conventional treatments may save only a few percent of patients
with such a disease.
Ian Krop. MD, PhD, coauthor of the study reported that the hybrid agent called
T-DM1, shrank tumors by 30 percent or more in 40 percent of women with
HER2-positive cancers.
What is more important may be that 13 percent had stable disease for at least
six months. The median time before the cancer progressed was 7.3 months,
according to a press release.
There is no comparison given in the press release to demonstrate how better this
hybrid agent is at extending patients’ lives compared to standard therapies.
What kills a breast cancer patient is not the disease itself. Patients get
killed after the disease spreads to other vital organs like the lung, liver and
brain, according to an early report by Chicago Tribune.  Shrinkage of breast
cancer (even complete removal of the breast) does not necessarily stop spreading
of the disease.  At least the new drug could not halt the spreading of the
disease for a long term.