Alex,

I'll answer as many of these questions as I can, but I don't know the
answers to all of them. My mother and I have just started rebuilding
our relationship after quite a few years away from each other. The
first time she was diagnosed with breast cancer they did a lumpectomy
and removed the lump. They treated her with chemo and radiation,
though I'm not sure what kind as she was in Arizona and I was in
Michigan at the time. She moved back to Michigan shortly after
finishing her treatments.Within a year another lump appeared. The dr.
did a biopsy and cofirmed cancer again. She was told she could not
have another lumpectomy, but needed a mastectomy instead. So she had
the surgery to remove her left breast, and again had chemo and
radiation, and again I'm not sure what kind as this is where we just
started talking again. Upon removing her breast within just a few
short months another lump was discovered, this time in the scar
tissue. The dr. removed it and again it was positive for cancer. She
once again did radiation and chemo, and was told that this would be
the last time radiation could be used because she was *maxed out* for
her lifetime. I didn't know you could max out any kind of treatment,
but according to my mother that is what she was told. They also
removed her ovaries saying that the cancer was attached to her
estrogen. A few weeks ago she again complained about a lump in her
scar tissue. The dr looked at it and said it was probably cancer again
but he says he cannot remove it without leaving a hole to large to
close. Her heart has been damaged by the chemo, and they suspect that
it was also hit with radiation though they say they won't know that
until she is dead and an autopsy is done. Once the second lump was
found on her scar they did more scans and that is when the mysterious
spot on her lung was found. She has more tests this week and next,
including a cat scan tp try to determine if the spot on her lung is
cancer too. I don't know what a HER/2 is, but I can ask her about it.
She is being treated at a very good hospital here. It's a special
cancer center, but I really want to try to get her to go to Ann Arbor,
it's the best medical university around here. She really likes her
dr.'s though so I doubt she'll go anywhere else. I think that is all
the info I have for now, but I will ask your ?'s to her too and see if
maybe I can give you more info. Thank you all for your help so far.

Ginny

Kaye,

Thank you for this info. I will print it off and show her, maybe she
has or can try some of these. Thanks for the help.

Ginny

Heart problems with Herceptin: In a small number of women, Herceptin
alone or in combination with chemotherapy can lead to serious heart
problems including ventricular dysfunction and congestive heart
failure. This life-threatening side effect is more common among
patients who receive Herceptin in combination with the AC chemotherapy
regimen (chemotherapy consisting of an anthracycline, such as
Adriamycin or Ellence, and cyclophosphamide). However, Herceptin is
not approved for use with this chemotherapy drug combination outside
of the clinical trial setting. Women considering Herceptin should have
their heart function evaluated by a physician before beginning
treatment. Once on Herceptin, women should be closely monitored for
any heart problems that may occur.

I don't know what Kaye is refering to an antidote to Herceptin, but
the potential  heart damage caused by herceptin is cogestive heart
failure which only a few short years ago was hard to treat and now can
be effectively treated by medications.

Also there is a new ( in clinical trials) second generation of
herceptin
http://www.lbbc.org/trans_tele20040622.html

From the web page"Then to finish up, I myself presented data on a
completely new way of treating breast cancer. Trastuzumab is an
antibody and it binds to the HER-2 protein. Lapatinib is a new drug.
It is a pill, so unlike the trastuzumab, which many of the audience
might be familiar with, which is given through the vein or as an IV
medication, this is actually a pill with little to no toxicity.
There's no hair loss. There's no nausea. About five percent of
patients will get diarrhea with this medicine.

 

Unlike trastuzumab the way this drug works is it's almost like a
direct bomb to the HER-2 and   the EGFR receptor. So unlike
trastuzumab, which only targets the HER-2 protein, this drug actually
targets not only HER-2, but another important protein found in breast
cancer, which is EGFR. Many of you might be familiar with this protein
because it's the target for a drug called Iressa, which was recently
approved in lung cancer.

 

The study that I presented was in patients who had already received
trastuzumab and their tumors had continued to grow on trastuzumab. So
we used this new way of targeting the HER-2 protein in addition to
targeting the EGFR protein. What we found is that at eight weeks or
two months of treatment close to half of the patients had cancers that
had either stopped growing or had responded to the treatment,
remembering that these were patients who had received a number of
chemotherapies prior to going onto the study, and treatment with at
least eight weeks of trastuzumab study.

 

When we looked at the data a little bit better at four months of
treatment close to one third of the patients cancers had not grown or
they had shrunk in size. This is certainly one of the highest response
rates we've ever seen in metastatic breast cancer, especially HER-2
positive breast cancer. So there are currently a number of trials
ongoing with this new treatment called lapatinib, and I think a lot of
people were excited about this drug. Certainly the presentation and
the efficacy that we saw with the drug in metastatic "