Positive Results on Breast Cancer Treatment Trial

A new ray of hope for women fighting aggressive breast cancer

Enhertu and Trodelvy are the drugs that went under trial to treat advanced breast cancer. Both the medications are antibody-drug conjugates, an antibody infused with a chemo drug that delivers the chemotherapy directly to cancer cells.

The clinical trial with 557 patients in Asia, Europe, and North America, shows that Enhertu serves cancer progression-free survival nearly double the time of standard chemotherapy in a patient with advanced breast cancer. This drug is proven very effective in patients with HER2 and HER2-low types of breast cancer. "Once it's released inside the target cancer cell, the drug can now pass through the membrane of the cells and it can enter neighboring cells which may not have that target protein," said Dr. Shanu Modi, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

Enhertu is less toxic than the standard chemo. More than 40 counties approved Enhertu for treating adults with HER2-positive breast cancer.

Trodelvy showed improved progression-free survival on average by 35% more than standard chemo, as shown in the study. The researcher recruited 543 patients for the research at 113 international locations with HR+/HER2- who were treated with hormone and targeted therapies and had undergone standard chemotherapy. Patients receive Trodelvy and another round of chemo. The result of the Trodelvy drug was better than that of standard chemotherapy.

The amount of time a tumor responds to the treatment without cancer spreading or growing was better in Trodelvy. The research also shows that Trodelvy was significantly more toxic than the standard chemo. However, its side-effect causes 6% of the patient to discontinue the treatment compared with 4% of standard chemotherapy.