In the phase III clinical trial, the median time to progression increased significantly from 13.8 to 18.2 months.
HER2-positive breast cancer, which affects approximately 20% to 30% of women with breast cancer, demands immediate attention because the tumors are fast-growing and there is a high likelihood of relapse.
These results provide the first evidence that adding a third chemotherapy to the most commonly used treatments of Herceptin and taxanes provides a considerable extra benefit for patients with a particularly aggressive form of the disease.
“Patients with advanced stage HER2-positive breast cancer often have a poor prognosis as their type of cancer does not always respond well to standard chemotherapy regimens,” said Dr Andrew Wardley, consultant medical oncologist from Christie Hospital. “The results show encouraging signs for triple combination therapies.”
In addition to the significant results for time to progression for patients on the triple combination, there was also a positive trend in progression-free survival from a median of 12.8 to 14.8 months.
For the primary endpoint of overall response rate, patients in both arms achieved similarly high results of approximately 70%.
Follow-up of this study is ongoing and final data analysis is expected in 2007.