Ten years of HER2-directed therapy: still questions after all these years

Excerpt

In 1998, the FDA approved trastuzumab (Herceptin), the first drug specifically targeting the HER2 protein, for the treatment of breast cancers overexpressing HER2. For patients with this aggressive subtype of breast cancer, the addition of trastuzumab to conventional chemotherapy dramatically improves disease-free and overall survival in both the adjuvant and advanced disease settings [1‐3]. Although trastuzumab is a powerful weapon in our armamentarium against HER2-positive cancers, it is inactive in some patients and loses its effectiveness in others. A significant fraction of women treated with adjuvant trastuzumab still experience disease recurrence, and in the metastatic setting, tumor resistance to trastuzumab inevitably occurs, underscoring the need for additional treatments for HER2-positive disease. …