Combined drugs extend lives of breast cancer patients

By Caribbean Medical News Staff
Doctors have fully embraced and standardized a combination of three breast cancer drugs which are reputed to give the patients an additional 16 months of life. The combination includes two drugs referred to as “magic bullet” drugs and standard chemotherapy. It helps patients with advanced HER-2 positive breast cancer which is hard-to-treat and deemed a death sentence.
Dr Jennifer Keating Litton of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre said: “I can’t think of something that improves survival by this much. Often, we debate over changing practice for something that extends survival by a few months. 15.7 months is very impressive and that is exactly what I see in the clinic.” Dr Jennifer Keating Litton was not on the research team.
Dr Sandra Swain of MedStar Washington Hospital Centre, who headed the trial said: “We’ve never seen results like this before in HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. This unprecedented data gives patients with an aggressive disease hope to live a longer, better life”.
The California-based Genentech made the two-drug cocktail. The cocktail includes monoclonal antibodies which are lab-engineered antibodies that zero in on tumour cells, according to researchers.
One is Herceptin, originally made to fight HER-2 breast tumours, which accounts for about 20 percent of breast cancer cases; the second is called pertuzumab, (brand name Perjeta), designed to complement Herceptin while the third drug is docetaxel which is a standard chemotherapy drug.
The study of 800 patients with advanced breast cancer revealed that the drug combination slowed the tumours and kept the women alive about 16 months longer than had the women only taken docetaxel. The women lived on average for 56 months, which is almost five years, when compared to the usual lifespan of two to three years, researchers said.
In addition, Dr. Swain said that the combination is approved for women with advanced breast cancer and that a trial is currently being carried to determine the efficacy of the drug on women with earlier-stage breast cancer patients, right after the removal of the tumour. Swain asserted that there are reasons to be cautious. The treatment costs about $10,000 a month and Perjeta adds to the side-effects. “You do have an increase of diarrhoea and rash, and it’s expensive,” she added.