lapatinib
 

Ladies, could you please share your knowledge.
I'm on herceptin currently, I had 5+ lymph nodes, no distant methastasis found for now. I'thinking about adding lapatinib to my treatment. It is not approved for non-methastatic cancer in the UK where I live so it is a big challenge and a big expens trying to get it. Would lapatinib + herceptin be more effective than herceptin alone? Would it be reasonable to do lapatinib after herceptin finished?
Thanks. It is ridiculuos that I ask you about it instead of asking oncologists but they are just quoting NICE guidelines in their replies to me and sound like a prerecorded message "not proven not proven". I don't trust them in this matter as NICE concerned more about costeffectivnes than about my personal chanses to survival.

Hi - repost this under the Herceptin/Tykerb forum! There are a few ladies there who are doing Herc and Ty together... They should be able to share lots of info with you.

xx :) done

The trial results are not in to ascertain the effectiveness of lapatinib (tykerb) with herceptin, but as you know there are on some trials commencing about this. You also note it is not US-FDA approved for outside the metastatic setting, so that is hard to say, especially as you note you are in the UK.

I wanted to try tykerb ( and joined the clinical trial) because herceptin is not working for me, and has never worked as far as we can tell. Since tykerb attacked from within the cell, I thought it might help. I was on it after the clinical trial once FDA approved, but actually stopped it due to the high Grade III diarhhea I was experiencing.

I wish you the best of luck, and still try to read all I can about its untapped potential...keep us posted.

Regards,