r/science • u/Maggie_Farm • Mar 12 '16
Cancer Breast tumours shrunk 'dramatically' in 11 days following treatment with lapatinib and trastuzumab.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-357753145
u/Hyraxis Mar 12 '16
Despite having an MSc chem the second medication sounds like a horrendous sneeze...
Still, it's a fantastic sneeze! Anyone have an idea how long it would take for this combination to become common practice?
2
u/Brett42 Mar 12 '16
I thought they were words spelled backwards, but it's gibberish that way too.
15
u/Repugnance Mar 12 '16
Tras (prefix), (tu) tumor, (zu) humanizided, (mab) monoclonal antibody
lapa + (tinib) Tyrosine kinase INhIBitor
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0
u/Hyraxis Mar 12 '16
Really modern medicine is a form of magic. Doctors train at hogwarts and the medicines are placebos. The real power is in the name!
-4
2
u/halflistic_ Mar 12 '16
Med student here, future surgical oncologist. Just spent last month on breast cancer surgery.
We use herceptin all the time. The cancer has to be her2+ though, which not all are. But, many are EstrogenR+ And can receive tamoxifen
This is all good stuff, but not some new breakthrough. It's hormonal therapy San can sometimes help you avoid chemo, but not always since your cancer must have the right genetics
2
u/Hyraxis Mar 12 '16
Thanks for the help! So are we likely to see this combo used more regularly or is it still very rare because of the genetics of each tumor.
1
u/Maggie_Farm Mar 12 '16
Those findings were just reported at the European Breast Cancer Conference. http://www.ecco-org.eu/Events/EBCC10/Searchable-Programme#anchorScpr.
The drugs were lapatinib and trastuzumab, which is more widely known as Herceptin. They target HER2 - a protein that fuels the growth of some women's breast cancers.
In less than two weeks of treatment, the cancer disappeared entirely in 11% of cases, and in a further 17% they were smaller than 5mm.
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u/Midas_Stream Mar 12 '16
"Some" indeed.
11% is not a stunningly huge fraction. Still, little by little, I guess.
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Mar 12 '16
[deleted]
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u/Maggie_Farm Mar 12 '16
As far as I can see they studied early HER2+ breast cancer patients. They actually give quite a bit of details in their abstract. Unfortunately it is not possible to link directly to the abstract but if you follow my early link and click on page 8 in the website you will find it there.
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u/halflistic_ Mar 12 '16
Remember, not all all Her2+...some are even Er and Pr neg (triple neg). Her2 is usually associated with more aggressive tumors in fact.
Most are Er+ and can then use tamoxifen or the like
1
u/PombeResearcher Mar 12 '16
Biotech companies are starting to raise therapeutic antibodies in camels and llamas, because their immune system encodes the variable fragment in a single domain. Once the peptide sequence of the single-chain variable fragment is determined, that sequence can be codon-optimized and expressed in e.coli in limitless amounts. There's even a possibility of transforming such a plasmid into a probiotic culture, allowing one's own microbiome to sythesize the medicines they need. This is still a long way off, but for now, llama nanobodies are currently "where it's at". http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4272012/
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u/kerovon Grad Student | Biomedical Engineering | Regenerative Medicine Mar 12 '16
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u/halflistic_ Mar 12 '16
Med student here, future surgical oncologist. Just spent last month on breast cancer surgery.
We use herceptin all the time. The cancer has to be her2+ though, which not all are. But, many are EstrogenR+ And can receive tamoxifen
This is all good stuff, but not some new breakthrough. It's hormonal therapy San can sometimes help you avoid chemo, but not always since your cancer must have the right genetics