A new treatment could offer hope to breast cancer sufferers who have stopped responding to the leading drug Herceptin, according to a study published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.
A new medication called Affitoxin was found to help destroy aggressive, quickly growing tumors – known at HER2-positive tumors – in mice. Now clinical trials are needed to see if the drug will also work in humans.
"Historically, women with HER2-positive breast cancer had few treatments available to them. Herceptin changed that and is arguably one of the biggest advances in breast cancer in the last 20 years," Delyth Morgan, chief executive of Breast Cancer Campaign, explained to the Telegraph.
"However, in many cases Herceptin eventually stops working for these women. If Affitoxin realizes its potential as a new treatment for HER2-positive breast cancer, it may overcome this issue of resistance and become an important alternative treatment."
Affitoxin works by infecting tumor cells with a bacterial toxin. When used in clinical trials on mice, "relatively large, aggressive tumors stopped growing and most of them disappeared," explain the researchers.