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New Cancer Therapy Shown to Extend Lives

05 January 2010

Spotlight - Breast Cancer

Some women with advanced breast cancer may have a new treatment option. A combination of two drugs that more precisely targets tumors significantly extended the lives of women who had stopped responding to other medicines, doctors reported Friday (11_Dec., 2009). Herceptin and Tykerb aim at a protein, HER-2, that is made in abnormally large quantities in about one-fourth of all breast cancers. Herceptin blocks the protein on the cell's surface; Tykerb does it inside the cell. Patients with advanced breast cancer who took Herceptin with another drug, Tykerb, lived about five months longer than women who took only Tykerb.

(from Chicago Tribune/Marilynn Marchione-Associated Press) 12_Dec.,2009

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