%0 Journal Article
%T Update on HER-2 as a target for cancer therapy: Herceptin in the clinical setting
%A David W Miles
%J Breast Cancer Research
%D 2001
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/bcr326
%X Targeted therapies are not a new concept in the field of breast cancer, strategies aimed at targeting the oestrogen receptor having been with us for many years. The identification and exploitation of other targets has taken longer than had been hoped. It is more than 30 years since growth receptors were identified, but only in the past couple of years has a treatment targeting these receptors been available.Women whose tumours express HER-2 at high levels have a relatively poor prognosis with a median survival of 3 years, compared with 6¨C7 years for HER-2-negative cases [1]. Many studies published subsequently have demonstrated that HER-2 overexpression is associated with other features of a poor prognosis, namely high tumour grade/S-phase fraction and oestrogen and progesterone receptor negativity [2]. In many series, however, HER-2 status remains an independent poor prognostic feature. Whether HER-2 status is a predictor of response to other treatment modalities in breast cancer, namely hormonal and cytotoxic therapy, remains contentious. Conflicting data are presented in the literature regarding the ability of HER-2 positivity to predict relative resistance to hormonal therapy and chemotherapy. The major difficulties in interpreting these studies is that they are retrospective analyses and, in many instances, there is no satisfactory 'control' arm against which to test attributable benefit of a treatment intervention in different HER-2 subgroups. While debate on this area is bound to continue, it seems unlikely that prospective studies of adjuvant hormonal and/or chemotherapy will be stratified according to HER-2 status. Such is the conflicting nature of the literature regarding HER-2 as a predictive factor that a rational view would be that no active therapeutic option should be disregarded based solely on the HER-2 status of a patient's tumour [3].The two studies that led to the licensing of herceptin as treatment for metastatic breast cancer have now been publ
%K breast cancer
%K herceptin
%K HER-2
%U http://breast-cancer-research.com/content/3/6/380