Interview
with Neil Love, MD from Breast Cancer Update for Medical Oncologists,
Program 3 2000
Play
Audio Below:
First
of all the word negative is a misnomer. If we look hard enough we
find HER2 receptors on all cells. We know that for HER activation
there needs to be a certain juxtaposition for homodimerization or
heterodimerization, but I think much in the way that we perhaps
had to learn that tamoxifen was relatively not helpful in ER-poor
breast cancer, I still need to learn whether that’s true for
HER2 neu "normal breast cancer." There certainly are conceivable
interactions between Herceptin and chemotherapy that may make us
revisit the notion that you need to have 2+ or 3+ over-expression,
for example, to see synergy with Taxol. Perhaps there are down stream
events within the signal transduction pathway that are affected
by this antibody that do not relate to receptor ligand effects for
phosphorylation of the tyrosine kinase. It still remains a mystery
as to why the apparent – at least additive or super additive
– benefits of adding Herceptin to Taxol occur, and I think
that this does deserve prospective randomized examination.
