New Method To Destroy Breast Cancer Tumors In 11 Days
In just 11 days, the combination of different drugs could help cancer patients get rid of their tumors and even save them from further chemotherapy.
Breast cancer is the most common variety of this disease in the female population. In Spain, the annual incidence is over 22,000 cases, i.e. 28.5% of all tumors detected in women.
Today, early detection continues to be the most effective way to increase patient survival rates, as there are several treatments that fight tumors in their initial stages.
However, breast cancer is still one of the pathologies that causes the most deaths in the female population, reaching almost 42,000 victims each year.
New technologies and advances in medicine are focused on finding even more effective treatments for diagnosed women.
One of the most recent was presented at the European Breast Cancer Conference in Amsterdam (Netherlands), which attracted considerable attention because it could destroy some tumors in just 11 days.
These are two drugs developed by a group of researchers, headed by university professor Judith Bliss, of the Cancer Research Institute, who assures that they could be an alternative to chemotherapy.
The discovery comes from a trial funded by Cancer Research UK, and its results could be quite incredible if the treatment is given during the initial stages of tumor development.
The method
To carry out this research, Bliss and her team of scientists set out to analyze the effects of the drugs Trastuzumab and Lapatinib on tumors of HER2-positive breast cancer, immediately after diagnosis and before having to resort to surgery.
A total of 257 women newly diagnosed with HER2 breast cancer were enrolled in the experiment.
They were divided into three groups to carry out an 11-day treatment, between the initial diagnosis and the date of the chemical intervention.
One group was given Trastuzumab, another group received Lapatinib, and the last group received nothing at all.
However, taking into account previous studies that suggested the efficacy of the combination of Trastuzumab and Lapatinib against HER2 breast cancer, the team modified their trial during the research, and the women in the Lapatinib group also had received doses of Trastuzumab.
To clarify the effects, before and after the 11-day period, the scientists took data from biomarkers of cell proliferation in breast cancer tumors, including their levels of Ki67 protein, and apoptosis or cell death. programmed.
The effects of treatment
After 11 days of treatment, it was determined that 17% of the 66 women treated with the two drugs had tumors too small to measure their cell proliferation, i.e., less than 5 mm in diameter.
In addition, in more than 11% of the cases, the drugs had completely eliminated the tumor, which proves that they have a relatively complete pathological response.
In women treated with Trastuzumab, tumor reduction or total elimination was only 3%.
On the other hand, the condition of those who received no treatment did not change.
The results surprised the researchers because this method could cure types of cancer without having to resort to chemotherapy.
HER2 breast cancers are known to be more recurrent than others, so this finding may give hope to patients who suffer from them.
A treatment option for tumors
Taking the results of this study into account, the researchers suggest that combining Trastuzumab and Lapatinib before surgery may be a treatment option for women who have this type of cancer.
Its success could eliminate the need for aggressive chemotherapy.
Professor Nigel Bundred, a university professor of oncology and co-author of the study, says:
On the other hand, in her statements in The Telegraph newspaper, Dr Bliss pointed out that the possibilities of eradicating this type of 11-day tumor are very real.
Today, the effects of drugs are still being studied. But it is believed that this is a great hope among the tools that fight the disease.
