The study reviewed here may be important to women who are being treated for HER2-positive, advanced breast cancer. More than half of the women with HER2-positive, advanced breast cancer who received two targeted therapies—Herceptin (chemical name: trastuzumab) and Avastin (chemical name: bevacizumab)—responded to the combination of these two medicines. This is important because HER2-positive breast cancers tend to be more aggressive and harder to treat.
Targeted cancer therapies are newer types of cancer treatments that target specific characteristics of cancer cells. Most targeted therapies are antibodies that work like the antibodies made by our immune system. So targeted therapies are also called immune targeted therapies.
Herceptin is the best known targeted therapy for breast cancer. Herceptin only works against breast cancers that have extra HER2 genes and make too many HER2 protein receptors. Herceptin does have a number of potentially serious side effects.
Avastin is also a targeted therapy. Avastin targets the new blood vessels that feed cancer cells. Avastin has been approved by the FDA to treat certain types of advanced cancers of the lung, colon and rectum. Avastin also has been studied in combination with chemotherapies such as Taxol (chemical name: paclitaxel) and Xeloda (chemical name: capecitabine) for treating breast cancer. Like Herceptin, Avastin has a number of potentially serious side effects.
It's important to note that the study reviewed here is a Phase II study. Phase II studies usually look at whether or not a treatment approach works. Before any treatment is accepted, a Phase III study is done. Phase III research tries to determine whether a new treatment approach is better than standard approaches.
This means that more research is needed before Herceptin and Avastin in combination are routinely offered as a treatment option for HER2-positive, advanced breast cancer. Right now, Avastin is not approved in the United States to treat breast cancer. Avastin is available to women with advanced breast cancer in clinical trials.
ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss drugmaker Roche said on Monday a combination of Herceptin and Avastin could prove effective in treating an aggressive form of breast cancer.
A phase II study, which investigated the first-line treatment of HER2-positive advanced breast cancer, showed that more than half of the patients showed a complete or partial response to treatment, the group said in a statement.
The study showed that the safety profile of the combination of the two drugs was acceptable and lacked the typical chemotherapy-related side effects, Roche said.
HER2-positive breast cancer affects around 20 to 30 percent of woman with breast cancer and requires special attention because the tumours are often fast-growing and there is a high likelihood of relapse, the group said.
The combination would fight the tumour by blocking the HER2 protein that gives the cancer instructions to grow and by starving the cancer of its blood supply.
A phase III trial investigating the clinical benefits of adding Avastin to Herceptin plus one of the standard chemotherapies for the first-line treatment of advanced breast cancer is ongoing, Roche said.
Last week, the group said a combination of Avastin and Xeloda drugs may offer clinical benefits to metastatic breast cancer patients with no prior treatment history, boosting hopes Avastin could gain U.S. approval for the disease.
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