In women with HER2-positive breast cancer, the combining of the drug pertuzumab with trastuzumab and docetaxel chemotherapy extended survival, U.S. researchers say.
Dr. Jose Baselga of the Harvard Medical School, who is associate director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and chief of hematology/oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital, was the senior researcher.
He and colleagues conducted an international phase three, double-blind, randomized trial, known as CLEOPATRA for CLinical Evaluation Of Pertuzumab And TRAstuzumab.
Baselga said the findings represent a significant advance in the treatment of this advanced breast cancer.
"This is huge. It is very uncommon to have a clinical trial show this level of improvement in progression-free survival," UPI.com quoted Baselga as saying in a statement. "Most metastatic patients with HER2-positive breast cancer eventually stop responding to trastuzumab, so the fact that we now have an agent that can be added to current treatment to delay progression is very exciting. With the advent of trastuzumab and now pertuzumab, we have come a very long way in treating a type of breast cancer that once had a very poor prognosis."
Study participants were randomly assigned to receive trastuzumab and docetaxel chemotherapy with pertuzumab or a placebo.
Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study found progression-free survival time was 18.5 months for patients who received pertuzumab compared with 12.4 months for patients who received placebo - a 38 percent reduction in risk for progression.
