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  Awards Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Ctr. Boston Medical Center Boston University Brigham and Women's Hospital Broad Institute Cambridge Health Alliance Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Ctr. Children's Hospital Boston Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Grants Harvard University Joslin Diabetes Center Lahey Clinic Mass. General Hospital Mass. Health Law McLean Hospital MIT New England Baptist Hospital Personnel Moves Public Health Research Short White Coat Tufts-New England Medical Center Tufts University UMass Memorial Medical Center University of Massachusetts VA Medical Centers    A Healthy Blog Running A Hospital Nature Network Boston SciBos - Corie Lok's blog Kevin, M.D. Blog, MD Dr. Flea's blog Nurse at small Your Child's Health Blog Healthy Children blog WBUR's CommonHealth Other Globe Blogs
Elizabeth Cooney is a health reporter for the Worcester Telegram &
Gazette.
Boston Globe Health and Science staff:
Scott Allen Alice Dembner Carey Goldberg Liz Kowalczyk Stephen Smith Colin Nickerson Beth Daley Karen Weintraub, Deputy Health and Science Editor, and Gideon Gil, Health and Science Editor. Short White Coat blogger Ishani Ganguli  |
« Brockton Hospital to get cutting-edge radiation machine | Main | Norovirus toll climbs to nearly 400 at rehab center » Tuesday, March 13, 2007Breast cancer drug wins FDA approvalBy Scott Allen, Globe Staff Federal regulators today approved a new treatment for breast cancer that oncologists believe could be the second coming of Herceptin, one of the most successful anti-cancer drugs of the last decade. The Food and Drug Administratrion is expected to approve Tykerb, also called lapatinib, for women with advanced cancer that can no longer be controlled by Herceptin, but major studies are already underway to find out if Tykerb should also be given to millions of women who are in the early stages of cancer. Goss said Tykerb might be even more effective than Herceptin, which is credited with extending the life expectancy by more than 1.5 years for women who suffer HER-2 positive breast cancer. Tykerb, he said, appears to shut down more molecular pathways that lead to cancer than Herceptin partly because Tykerb molecules are small enough to get inside cancer cells. As a result, he said Tykerb could be stronger than Herceptin and work in some women other than the 20 to 30 percent who have the HER2-positive form of the disease. "If I can equate it to lighting a building and your task is to turn all the lights off, you can go room by room and turn them off, or if you're lucky, you discover a circuit breaker that can shut down whole floors," said Goss. Tykerb "might be that circuit breaker." Goss said it's premature for doctors to prescribe Tykerb for early stage breast cancer unless women can't take Herceptin for some reason, such as side effects. In the long run, he said doctors will likely need both, though women may like Tykerb better because, unlike Herceptin, it's a pill rather than an injection. Posted by Karen Weintraub at 04:08 PM
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