HER2-Positive Breast Cancer
Improving current treatments and finding new ways of fighting HER2-positive breast cancer is a big objective for Breakthrough’s scientists. We also want to improve diagnosis through more sensitive testing to determine exactly how a patient should be treated.
What is HER2-positive breast cancer?
When a cancer is HER2-positive it means the tumour has high levels of the HER2 receptor protein, which helps it grow. Herceptin, a drug designed to target HER2, has proved beneficial for many patients with this form of breast cancer.
Some 25% of breast cancers are HER2-positive. They tend to grow quickly and are more likely to return after treatment.
What is Breakthrough doing about it?
Breakthrough’s Dr Anthony Kong, is working to develop a new, accurate and sensitive test to predict whether a patient will benefit from Herceptin treatment. This test could also be useful for predicting whether future targeted treatments will benefit individual patients.
Herceptin doesn’t work for all HER2-positive breast cancer patients, however, and resistance can develop to the treatment.
Dr Kai-Keen Shiu, one of Breakthrough’s Dr Avons, is looking for the differences between responsive and resistant tumours. His work will help scientists develop new, more accurate ways to treat patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.
Dr Jorge Reis-Filho, who leads the Molecular Pathology Laboratory at the Breakthrough Research Centre, has identified several genes that help HER2-positive breast cancers grow and spread. Potentially, new drugs could be developed to target these genes.
These genes will also tell us why some HER2 positive tumours resist treatment - information that could help us in future to design new treatments or to re-sensitise tumours to existing treatments.
