COURTNEY STEWART/Daily Bruin Pharmacy technician
Jaime Cosico tests a new drug that has been proven
to work well with chemotherapy.
By Robert Salonga
Daily Bruin Staff
UCLA is leading the way in developing a drug that has the
potential to increase the life expectancy of some breast cancer
patients.
Herceptin will be used in a clinical trial headed by the UCLA
Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. The study extends to about 600
institutions on five continents.
Physicians are seeking more than 3,000 women with early-stage
breast cancer to participate in the study, which began June 20,
according to Jonsson Center spokesperson Kambra McConnel.
Dr. Dennis Slamon, director of the Revlon/UCLA Women’s
Cancer Research Program, hopes to investigate the effects of
Herceptin in women with aggressive breast cancer that has not yet
metastasized, or spread to other parts of the body.
He published related findings in the March 15 issue of the New
England Journal of Medicine, showing that the drug, in combination
with chemotherapy, increases survival rate for those with
late-stage breast cancer.
According to Slamon, the combination treatment has decreased
breast cancer deaths by 27 percent in women whose metastatic breast
cancer is the result of an alteration in the HER-2/neu gene, which
resides in tumor cells and causes the cancer to spread. About 25 to
30 percent of women with breast cancer have this gene mutation.
“By giving Herceptin and chemotherapy at an earlier stage,
we hope to help patients who have the genetic alteration live
longer and ultimately have the best chance of being cured. However,
this has to be proven first in a clinical trial,” Slamon said
in a statement.
Researchers will randomly select study participants and assign
them to one of three therapy groups, which combines Herceptin with
the different chemotherapy drugs Adriamycin, Cytoxan, Taxotere and
Platinum. Researchers will then identify the most effective
combination of drugs.
To be eligible for the study, a patient’s tumor cells must
have higher levels of the HER-2/neu protein than usual. Women with
breast tumors two centimeters or larger and who have no lymph node,
or those with small tumors and one lymph node will be
considered.
Slamon said all study participants will receive the best
available standard therapies for early-stage breast cancer.
Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1998, Herceptin
is the first breast cancer treatment to successfully attack a
specific genetic mutation that causes an aggressive form of the
disease.
It does not yield side effects of standard chemotherapy
treatment, such as hair loss, fatigue and low blood counts.
It will take 18 to 30 months to screen about 15,000 women,
Slamon said, and 3,150 eligible patients will be enrolled in the
trial.
Interested candidates can contact the Jonsson Center Clinical
Trials toll-free hotline at (888) 798-0719.