for Lani (and all)

Hey Lani (and all),

I was intrigued by a long post you made recently about a new essay by Angela Brodie about estrogen deprivation and upregulation of her2 so I emailed her directly to ask her about this. In my email I wrote that a recent poster to this board "suggested that your conclusion was that long term estrogen deprivation might upregulate her2" and then I asked "if that is indeed what you have found." She wrote back promptly to say that her study did not really speak to that issue and was constructed "to investigate how tumors become resistant [to hormonal treatments] and whether we can re-sensitize them
to aromatase inhibitors." To me it sounds like the work is in keeping with various abstracts I've read in the past year that suggest that things like Iressa might ultimately be used not for their original function but as a way to optimize hormonal therapies in breast cancer.

Hope this helps.

Also, Brodie seemed open to fielding more questions....

All the best,
Jeff

Ask her if Aromasin, a steroid AI, is better than Arimidex, Femara etc(non-steroidal). One article suggested it was inherently less prone to resistance. Yet it seems hardly anyone is prescribing it.

Also whether she feels Herceptin or Lapatinib are likely to be good companions to hormonal treatments.