Breast Cancer Drug Could Treat Stomach Cancer

Monday, June 01, 2009 – Herceptin, a breast cancer drug may help treat stomach cancer also, according the results of a recent study.

This study was announced Sunday, at the annual meeting of American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Herceptin is a medicine used to treat women with breast tumors that have an over abundance of Her2, which is a type of protein. This study revealed to the doctors that twenty-two percent of the 3,807 patients with stomach cancer, had an over abundance of Her2 in their tumors as well. Five hundred and ninety-four of those patients with Her2 over abundance were participants in the study.

This recent study was done by Roche, the company that sells Herceptin. The patients involved had stomach cancer that received chemotherapy and added Herceptin as an addition. The results showed that these patients lived almost 14 months compared to those that just received chemotherapy alone which live around 11 months.

Stomach cancer is a rare type of cancer found in the United States, every year there are about one million new cases worldwide.

In another announcement at the conference, it was said that a cancer vaccine was being developed by Biovest International. This vaccine may extend the term of remission of a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for almost forty-four months, instead of the normal remission average of 31 months.

The scientists said that this vaccine won’t prevent the cancer, but will train the body’s immune system to attack the tumor. There has been some failure with it, but there is also progress.

Genitope and Favrille, are some other companies that have tried and failed with the vaccine similar to Biovest’s. The requirement that Biovest had for the patients before the vaccine, was for them to be in remission for six months first, since there was less tumor for the body to bttle against. Maybe that is why Biovest has had progress and the other two companies have not.

With technology today and better research it is looking more and better for cancer patients today than a couple years ago.