HER2 Support Group Forums - ASCO SF Breast Cancer meeting

I wanted to add a couple of comments on this as I was fortunate to attend this on behalf of Her2support.

Hopeful and Joe and others have done an amazing job of posting abstracts and articles of interest which were presented at this meeting. I encourage you to look at these as there were a number of very interesting topics.

During the meeting in the general sessions, there were several distinct "themes". I'd like to share a couple of these with you as I felt these really spoke to the direction of research and accomplishments vs. specific studies (although of course, much study date was reported in these talks!)

1. There was a lot of discussion on how peoples general health and "co-morbidities" impacted upon outcomes. Keeping your heart healthy. Keeping your bones healthy. Controlling insulin levels (which is linked to cancer activity). Problems in these areas not only complicates treatment and QOL issues, but in many cases contributes to the biology and growth of the cancer itself. Take aways for me, get that bone density measured, keep the blood pressure and weight controlled, exercise is hugely important - even more so than dietary measures.

There was a discussion of dietary and exercise studies (which we've all seen); In my opinion the data presented on dietary issues was thin, and did not address any of the Omega fat questions. In general the dietary discussion supported making good choices and suggested that we not stress over every gram of sugar consumed. Again, the more important factor was exercise.

2. Translational research - this is work done to speed the time to get new therapies into clinical trials and on to approval. We all know this takes too long! The emphasis of these discussions was focused on finding good "markers" which could better predict response, get early reads on efficacy - and determine who would benefit from a given therapy. Thus reducing the guesswork, trial and error and moving more quickly to measuring effectiveness in a targeted population. This is where basic science - learning how the biology works - impacts creation of future therapies. Another key focus was finding ways to share this data across the research community - get all the oars pulling the same direction.

3. New therapies - For me the most relevant was the HSP90 therapies. I believe some members are on trials with this. HSP90 protein was described as a "chaperone" which supports genes and pathways related to ALL the hallmarks of cancer. Her2 is on of the factors MOST strongly linked with HSP90, so this area of research is particularly valuable for those of us with Her2+++ cancer. The ability to shut this down would be a huge step to blocking the ability of cancers to grow. In early trials, HSPblockers have had response rates equivalent to Neratinib and TDM1, so these agents are very exciting!

Still happening all too slowly in my opinion, but I came away feeling hopeful...many smart minds are working very hard!