Something amazing has been revealed at the European Breast Cancer Conference in Amsterdam. Can we really get rid of breast cancer without chemotherapy?
This research was presented by Professor Nigel Bundred who revealed that they had been testing the effectiveness of two drugs known as Herceptin and Lapatinib. These are drugs commonly used in breast cancer treatments, however, this is the first time they have been used together before surgery and chemotherapy. The results from this were astonishing.
The use of these drugs was aimed to combat a protein known as HER2 which affects the growth and division of cancer cells. This study was funded by Cancer Research UK and was able to actually eliminate the need for chemotherapy as well as surgery. This is great because as you may already know chemotherapy is not entirely effective and has crippling side effects.
In this study, 257 women with HER2 positive breast cancer were selected to take part in the study. Half of the women were put on a combination of the two drugs and the other half were used as the control group. Researchers found that eleven percent of those on the drugs had no cancer cells remaining within just two weeks and seventeen percent of the cases actually experienced dramatic tumor shrinkage.
The control group, however, was only given Herceptin and only three percent showed a drop in tumor size. This led the researchers to conclude that using a combo of these two drugs had a major effect on breast cancer cells especially opposed to being used alone. The big issue here is that Herceptin is only available for use alongside chemotherapy. Researchers and many others are hoping that the results of this study help to change that. This is easily a major step when it comes to fighting cancer. Who knew we could eliminate some types of breast cancer in just eleven days? This is truly amazing.