Chime in please! Has herceptin (or tykerb)affected your eyebrows/lashes,fingers/toes/

[Lani]

heels?

heard two fascinating lectures today--one by the man who discovered breast cancer stem cells, Dr. Michael Clarke, the other by a researcher, Howard Chang. who is discovering how the cells in the body know where they are and what they should turn into.

There were disturbing slides of chick embryos whose" skin" from the lower limb buds during development was exchanged with that from the upper limbs and vice versa--with the chicks that developed having scales on their wings and feathers on their legs.

Dr. Chang has found groups of genes which seem to do this and epigenetic ways(by altering the way the chromatin--interweaving of chromosomes--is "read" by blocking the ability of the "reader" to get to the gene by having something sit on it and block it (think of an old casette tape with honey dripped on it intermittently) in which the cells which end up on the back vs front, close to the trunk vs fingertips and toes, etc seem to know what to become.

I remembered in my thread regarding side effects of Herceptin several mentioned that they lost the "outside" arc of their eyebrows and had much thinner, shorter eyelashes as well as cracking of the fingertips, heels and toe problems. I also remember that even those on Tykerb alone (xeloda tends to cause hand-foot syndrome it seems) have developed problems with the tips of their toes and toenails.

The genes he has identified don't seem to control things on the head and/or few people are willing to have a biopsy done voluntarily on their fact, so he remains perplexed about how facial features and hair niceties develop and are maintained.

I would appreciate if all would chime in regarding:

1)were you ever on herceptin alone

2)how long after chemo were you on herceptin

3)was anyone on herceptin without chemo

4)were you also on antihormonals

5) a)did you notice any problems with you eyebrows ?b) eyelashes?c) did they preceed herceptin, d)did they get better/worse on herceptin.e) did they get better after herceptin stopped?

6)a)did you have cracking of your finger tips, heels, toes, ingrown toenails-- b)similarly did they preceed herceptin, c)did they get better/worse on herceptin, d)did they get better after herceptin stopped?

7)Similarly for those on tykerb alone (or on teach and pretty sure they are not getting the placebo because of rash, etc)--are you having eyebrow, eyelash, toe, finger, heel issues and how long has it been since you had chemo (and whether you are on antihormonals as well)

There have been many popular threads here on hair and nail issues and perhaps we could help provide this researcher some direction regarding where to look in his research without his having to put scales on more chicks' wings or feathers or more chicks' legs!

Anybody?