artificial antibodies can shrink tumors in women with advanced breast cancer, researchers announced yesterday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting (ASCO) in Los Angeles. Experts said it is not yet known if treatment can extend patients' lives, but the news suggests renewed promise for these compounds, which have suffered disappointing clinical results in the late 1980s
antibodies are a first line of the body natural defenses against infection. Each antibody captures a specific target and holds on, alert meanwhile the rest of the immune system to the intruder. Genentech researchers have designed an artificial antibody to a particular molecule, a receptor for a growth factor called HER-2 / neu, which is found in abundance on the surface of recalcitrant breast tumors. Numerous studies have shown that the unlucky 25% to 30% of breast cancer patients whose tumors occur more HER-2 / neu have worse prognoses.
When the antibody was combined with the chemotherapy drug Taxol, 42% of 96 women with metastatic breast cancer have reacted with tumors decreased nearly half. This was much better than the 16% of 92 patients who improved with taxol alone. The addition of the antibody also appears to have extended the four months of time to relapse for up to 11 months. Side effects were minor. "For the marginal additional toxicity [to the patient], you get a huge amount of profit," says project leader Genentech Robert Cohen.
breast cancer patients who have exhausted other treatment options are already calling for the antibody, and the FDA has promised consideration within 6 months. "We estimate that 30,000 to 50,000 women would be eligible" to receive orders for Herceptin if approved, said Cohen.
Although Herceptin slows the progression of the disease, it is too early to say it extends women's lives, simulations radiation oncologist guard Alan Lichter of the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor and president of ASCO. Lichter calls "modest" response, but significant in that it shows that antibody therapies, considered the best for cancers of the blood, can work against solid tumors as well.
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