New Cancer treatment doesn’t herald the End of Breast Cancer

You may have recently heard about an intriguing new finding in breast cancer research, in which doctors were able to shrink and even destroy tumors in as little as 11 days. The U.K.’s Daily Mail called the findings “staggering” and The Guardian labeled it “astounding.” But while any step toward better treating cancer is a step in the right direction, it’s a bit too early to be shouting from the rooftops about this particular advance.
First off, here’s a breakdown of what actually happened: Results of a small trial funded by Cancer Research UK were recently presented at the 10th European Breast Cancer Conference in Amsterdam. In the trial, 257 women with an aggressive form of breast cancer known as human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) were split into four treatment groups: One was given no treatment for 11 days before they were scheduled for breast cancer surgery, another was given the drug lapatinib (also known as Tyverb), another was given trastuzamab (also known as Herceptin), and the last was given a combination of Tyverb and Herceptin.
Herceptin was the first drug that the Food and Drug Administration approved for HER2 breast cancer, and it works by binding to the receptor from outside the cell and disrupting the activation, explains Sanati. Tyverb, on the other hand, binds to the HER2 receptor from inside the cell.
While the latest trial is being heralded as a huge success, it’s worth pointing out that the new combination therapy didn’t work for everyone: The majority of women in that group (83 percent) still had breast cancer tumors that were the same size as they were when the trial began.