New treatments can change outcomes in 50% of many cancer patients

((((NewsNation) — Drugs that target proteins that promote breast cancer growth have been shown to act on tumors with very low protein levels. This is a development that Dr. Elizabeth Comen, a medical oncologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, calls “breakthrough.”

It’s not a cure. However, this latest advance in targeted cancer treatment has the potential to open up new treatment possibilities for thousands of patients with advanced breast cancer.

To date, breast cancer has been classified as either HER2-positive (cancer cells have more protein than normal) or HER2-negative. The doctor who reported Sunday’s preliminary report said that “HER2-low” would be a new category for guiding breast cancer treatment.

About half of patients with late-stage breast cancer who were previously classified as HER2-negative are actually low in HER2 and may be eligible for the drug.

The results of this study “change the treatment and potential outcomes of about 50% of breast cancer patients with metastatic disease,” Komen said. “We are all very excited about the new hopes and promises of this drug for a large population of breast cancer patients.”

The drug is Enhertu, an antibody-chemotherapy combination given by IV. It finds and blocks the HER2 protein on cancer cells, while releasing powerful cancer-killing chemicals into those cells. It belongs to a relatively new class of drugs called antibody drug conjugates.

The drug has already been approved for HER2-positive breast cancer, and in April the Food and Drug Administration granted the new patient group breakthrough status.

In a new study, the drug extended survival and improved survival without developing cancer in patients compared to patients receiving standard chemotherapy.

This study compared Enhertz with standard chemotherapy in approximately 500 patients with HER2 low breast cancer who had metastasized or could not be treated by surgery. The drug stopped the progression of the cancer for about 10 months, compared to about 5 and a half months in the group receiving regular treatment. The drug improved survival by about 6 months (17.5 to 23.9 months).

“This is a practice-changing study,” said Dr. Sylvia Adams, who directed breast cancer treatment at NYU Langone Health and enrolled several patients in the study. “This addresses a major unmet need for patients with metastatic breast cancer.”

According to experts, it is important to define the gray areas of HER2 to ensure that the appropriate patients are being treated and to closely monitor them.

The drug, which costs about $ 14,000 a month, can cause serious complications. Three patients in this study died of lung disease, a known risk of the drug. Doctors need to make sure that patients report breathing problems immediately. Then you can stop the drug and treat the patient with steroids.

The efficacy of this drug in men with breast cancer is also a question mark, and Comen acknowledges that experts continue to investigate the male population in connection with this drug.

“We need to look more into the group of men,” Komen said. “There are thousands of men diagnosed with breast cancer each year. There are also men in this country who die from it each year. Therefore, we certainly need to find out more about this treatment for men, but metastasis. If a man has been diagnosed with a sexual disorder, he can be confident that he has low-metastatic breast cancer with HER2, which may be a viable option for him. “

According to Komen, the next step is to get treatment for as many people as possible.

“We need to work with the FDA and insurance companies to ensure that this breakthrough treatment is offered to patients not only in academic centers, but also in national and community clinics,” says Comen. “It is very important that the patient asks the pathology report” Is it too low to hear? ” “Is this a drug I might be eligible to receive?” Or do I need another biopsy to determine the nature of the breast cancer and to determine if I am eligible for the drug? ?? “

The findings were taken up on Sunday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in Chicago and published by the New England Journal of Medicine. The funding for this research was jointly developed by Tokyo-based Daiichi Sankyo and UK-based AstraZeneca.

Patients take medicine until they become intolerable.

“Many people, including many patients, have never heard of HER2 low breast cancer,” said Dr. Shanumodi of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the lead author of the study.

“We finally have a HER2-targeted drug that can target that low level of HER2 expression for the first time,” Modi said. “This drug actually helps define HER2 low breast cancer. For the first time, it makes it a targetable population.”