Think Pinker

There’s been a lot of buzz lately on new diagnostic tools for breast cancer but there’s also some exciting news coming out of the Sarah Cannon research Institute relating to the treatment of breast cancer.

According to their chief medical officer Clinical Trials have reached phase ii for a drug called Trastuzumab-DM1, which is build from the Herceptin antibody which is so widely used.

In about 20% of all breast cancer cases the patient has too much HER2 protein. This allows the cancer to divide, grow, and spread much quicker.

Dr. Burris and his team were actually the first group of oncologists to use this treatment back in 2006 and one of the first things they noticed was that the toxicity was minimal to nearby cells that were not cancerous.

It’s been nicknamed the smart bomb because of its ability to zone in and target cancerous cells much more efficiently. And of course that’s great news!

There are actually a few different studies currently ongoing and all in Stage II of the trials. So far there has been a whole lot of positive reporting and very little negative effect to date.

Should we be getting excited? Hopeful would be a better option. This is looking like a promising treatment but until trials are actually finished we won’t know for sure.

What really needs to be recognized here is that there are many new treatments on the horizon as well as a few new diagnostic tools that we might see soon. Research for breast cancer treatments and diagnostic is an ongoing and one day we’ll have the cure!