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I truly salute you survivors. Dr. Dennis Slamon quoted a one year average survival after dx of metastasis of her2neu positive breast cancer vs. 2 year average survival after dx of metastatic her2neu negative breast cancer--that being before herceptin.
Would it be too much trouble to ask each of you who have so generously posted your experiences with Stage 4 her2neu positive breast cancer to identify whether you were ER+ and/or PR+ and how much so?
Dr. Stephanie Jeffrey of Stanford University, a breast surgeon who has given up surgery to devote herself exclusively to research into breast cancer markers, has recently changed the long-held belief that only 10% of her2neu positive tumors are also hormone receptor positive. Her work indicates that it is between 45 and 55%. She also believes by looking at the multigene array results of these tumors that they fall into 3 different groups, each with a different prognosis.
Last week's HERA results were the first to report that Herceptin worked equally well in her2neu+ patients who were hormonal receptor positive as in those who were hormonal receptor negative. Until now, patients who wer both hormone receptor positive and her2neu positive had no statistics to reassure them as to whether they could hope to do as well as the other her2neu positive patients on herceptin.
I was wondering if our subset of patients who contribute to this site could
corroborate this--that is, are there hormone receptor positive patients among those who have beaten the odds and survived with Stage 4 disease and if there are, did your treatment also include antiestrogens or AIs?
We are all so indebted to you for pioneering the way-- thank you for letting us learn the most we can from your experiences !
Lani
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