AP article here.
Many doctors and patients are embracing a drug described as perhaps the most powerful cancer medicine in a decade, taking their cue from recent studies showing it can halve the risk of relapse for a very aggressive form of breast cancer.
Several experts used words like ''revolutionary,'' ''stunning'' and ''jaw-dropping'' to describe the findings on the impact of the drug, Herceptin. Some even talked of a ''cure'' for a considerable number of women.
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he drug, Herceptin, targets only diseased cells and is already used for advanced cancer. But in three studies involving thousands of women with early-stage disease, it cut the risk of a relapse in half.
The drug, made by Genentech, does not help everyone, though. For one thing, it is only for the estimated 20 percent of patients whose breast tumors churn out too much of a protein known as HER2. In the recent studies, the drug was used along with standard treatments, including surgery and chemotherapy. Even then, some patients relapsed.
Still, such benefits haven't been seen for a cancer drug since research a decade ago demonstrated the extraordinary strength of tamoxifen. Both drugs home in on cancer cells while sparing healthy ones -- part of the class of ''targeted'' drugs.
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