‘Historic’ results for breast cancer drug and promise for broader use
pharmafile | February 21, 2022 | News story | Sales and Marketing |
AstraZeneca has shared that its drug, Enhertu, has demonstrated meaningful survival improvements in patients with breast cancer, compared with physician’s choice of chemotherapy. Enhertu was shown to significantly help people suffering from a type of breast cancer associated with poor treatment options, opening the door to a much larger potential patient group.
Enhertu was shown in the DESTINY-Breast04 Phase III clinical trial to boost survival rates in patients with HER2-low unresectable and metastatic breast cancer. HER2 is a tyrosine kinase receptor growth-promoting protein. This protein is expressed on the surface of many different tumours including breast, gastric, lung and colorectal cancers. It is one of many biomarkers expressed in breast cancer tumours.
Susan Galbraith, Executive Vice President, Oncology R&D, AstraZeneca said: “Today’s historic news from DESTINY-Breast04 could reshape how breast cancer is classified and treated. A HER2-directed therapy has never-before shown a benefit in patients with HER2-low metastatic breast cancer. These results for Enhertu are a huge step forward and could potentially expand our ability to target the full spectrum of HER2 expression, validating the need to change the way we categorise and treat breast cancer.”
HER2 expression is currently defined as either positive or negative, and is determined by an IHC test, which measures the amount of HER2 protein in a cancer cell, or an ISH test which counts the copies of the HER2 gene in cancer cells.
Enhertu is a HER2-directed antibody drug conjugate (ADC) being jointly developed by AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo. Breast cancer is the most common cancer worldwide. It is also one of the leading global causes of cancer-related deaths. More than two million cases of breast cancer were diagnosed in 2020 resulting in nearly 685,000 deaths globally.
Ana Ovey
