Attempting to increase rate of Herceptin efficacy,decrease rate of Hercptn resistance

[michele u]

Wow, my brain hurts from reading all this, but veryyyy interesting all of it. I too believe that you can not get resistent to Herceptin. My opinion is the cancer finds another may to mutate. Like Gina said it binds or locks to the cell at that Her2 site. And i believe that our immune system is what "wipes" up the rest after the Herceptin. Just like anything in nature, a cancer cell tries to survive, just like anything in life. It wants to live, just like our bodies want to live. It's just hard to phathom that a part of "us" is the cancer cell. Our immune system failed us by letting the cancer cell start. If we as humans could only understand how we can "turn on" our immune system to repair the damage it let happen. I think our minds potential is there, we just need to find the "key" to turn it on

[julierene]

Everyone is so interested in enviornmental and dietary things to reverse or prevent breast cancer. I can't understand why it's so easy for everyone to forget about genetics - not just heredity. I tried to hide from it since I was 10 years old and my mother was dx with bc at age 28. Little did I know, I inherited the gene and I also was dx at age 28 with bc. My children have the gene too. I don't know where the mistake was made, but I know it was somewhere around my mothers parents. Before that, there is no cancer history. Genetic mutations have to occur sometime, why not in you?


I believe that someday, we will send off our blood, and they will tell us what we need to watch out for with great accuracy. And better yet, be able to correct some of the more severe problems like cancer.

Sometimes it's hard to read these boards, because I feel like the only one who knows there is a genetic mutation. Doing all the right things, didn't prevent mine. All the right supplements in the world, won't fix me or my children. It's a bad gene. I feel so alone sometimes cause everyone thinks it's all about supplements, diet, estrogen, and enviornment.

"Here's my take: do molecular profiling on the tumor cells and target the therapy accordingly, (this doesn't sound like rocket science), ie. test for HER1 - 3, VEGF, PI3K, PTEN, ER, or........lets do a trial on active mets with herceptin + pertuzumab + avastin + lucentis (which attacks VEGF in a different way) + LY294002 + say a friendly chemo drug like Xeloda. If I personally, had stage 4 cancer; I would volunteer as what's the worst that will happen, I'll die young?? After that, maintainence with herceptin + lapatinib + Avastin (+ faslodex if ER+)."

Kuddos to Al! It's about time people started realizing there is more than just HER2 receptors to block. Thanks!!!

Thanks RobinP, your posts are very insightful - I was thinking the same thing before I got to your post! Great job!

Hi Julierene,

I too agree that genetics often underplayed when it comes to reasons why one develops breast cancer. We are told that most bcs are spontaneous and not as a result of genetics. However, I really wonder if many of us who develop bc do so as a result of lack of certain oncogenes that prevent oncogenesis. See the following link for more on oncogenes for her2.

http://carcin.oxfordjournals.org/cgi.../26/3/643?etoc


PS. For many of us who get bc, I speculate that a host of events coupled with genetics causes bc with often estrogen and estrogen like compounds stimulating the ominous cancer cell transformation to begin with. Obviously, estrogen is a central culprit; else more males would develop bc.

I stress that I am no expert. I have read quite a lot, and continue to be amazed that instead of developing a more detailed understanding each door I open simply leads to a series more.

The way the body works is it appears unimagineably complex.

Yes genetics play a part but they do not explain the explosion of western disease in the mast 60-100 years.

Environmental factors play a part but they do not obviously explain why Eskimos, Japanese, South African indigenous fisherman, Greek Islanders etc have much lower rates of BC and prostrate cancer.

There is a factor and I agree with those muttering quitely in corners that it is probably diet based and quite likley to be to do with the balance of omega threes and sixes added to poor diet which leads to such imbalances, plus on top environmental factors etc as the icing.

The problem is that if this is an explanation it is a rather embarassingly simple one, and leaves rather a lot of egg splashed around, requires many red faces ....and apart from egos, it has huge financial, employment, agricultural, food manifacture and sale, diet, life style, environmental impact, drugs research production and sale, the way we run the health service, where research funds are targeted..etc..etc.... and so may take some time to filter through the levels of resistance in the same way smoking did - only hopefully not as long.

Alternatively us mutterers may by wrong, but personally I do not think so.

The three six balance is not a pancea, but for those looking for a key factor as to the western increase in disease I'm definatively with the mutterers.

RB

[julierene]

Yes, it's a terribly complex maze. The geneticists still can't tell us what the reason for the rhabdomyosarcoma and adrenal cortical carcinoma at age 5 and why the women get breast cancer before age 28. We all have the same p53 mutation too - located at Exon 10, Arg337Cys. Hard to believe a little tiny amino acid created all this trouble. They call our case rare, but 10 years ago, they tried to find it, but didn't know enough about p53 to test Exon 10.

We aren't rare, the technology and science is. It's only a matter of time before they start figuring out more of the puzzle.

I've never felt like supplements and dietary factors were a factor to causing or preventing cancer. I took Fish Oil, Flaxseed Oil, and all sorts of Antioxidants. When I didn't know about the gene, I thought if I just ate right and did all the right things, I wouldn't get it till I was a Grandma. I couldn't escape my genetics.

I ate extremely well compaired to my mother - and STILL got cancer at the same age! I even thought I caught mine earlier at Stage 2a - but it didn't matter. I went straight to Stage 4 only 1.5 years after initial dx, and she lived till 33 years old. I may or may not. Hopefully with Herceptin working so well for me, I will. But I couldn't escape my genetics - neither could my children. No matter how well I supplement them or feed them, their cancer risk will remain 80% before the age of 50 - unless they find a way to fix our genes.

I think the scariest part is, I have had the gene all my life - and even the doctors never knew it. How many of us here on these boards are in that category? We may never know, while we still feel so compelled to blame it on everything else.

I'd never say it was all about genetics, but I think it's HUGELY TREMENDOUSLY more responsible than we know. In 100 - 200 years, I think we will have a much better understanding - and people will finally have the answers about why they got cancer at such a young age (as many of the women here are).

For older women, it's a different story in my humble opinion. Age is definetly responsible for failing immune systems - therefore cancer. In those cases, diet, supplements, and overall health - may be much more helpful.

But how do you explain a perfectly healthy young woman getting BC at 28 or even 18? How do you explain a perfectly healthy child getting rhabdomyosarcoma at age 5? And on and on... I think genetics will prove to probably be somewhere around 90% responsible for people under the age of maybe 40 and show a decreasing relationship of age and cancer genetic incidence. As you get older, cancer risk goes up, reguardless of genetics. The younger you are, the more of a chance I would think genetics are at fault.

I hear of babies getting things like melanoma, and the mother hasn't been exposing her fetus to the sun enough to do that! People seem so eager to blame it on the mother though - without genetics even entering their minds. Also, early onset Alheizmer's. I brought the topics up to some of my older relatives, and they insisted it had to do with the mother's diet or bad habits and the Alheizmer's was because they were just insane - they were too young to really have Alheizmer's.

They also believed that a punch in the stomach gave my Grandfather liver cancer and that my brother falling out of the tree was what caused his rhabdomyosarcoma. It seems like I'm trying to talk to someone who doesn't understand what DNA is. But hey, for them, they still believe it was the punch and the fall that "caused" their cancer. They are happy with that, cause it means there was something tangible to blame it on. We all know it takes time to develop cancer - it was the punch and the fall that alerted them to the problem - not the other way around. But I can't convince them.

But those are just my 2 cents. Maybe time will tell. It's such a terribly complex disease.

[RobinP]

"No matter how well I supplement them or feed them, their cancer risk will remain 80% before the age of 50 - unless they find a way to fix our genes."


I think what you are suggesting, in reference to fixing our potentially bad genetic make-up, may not be too far fetched someday. Perhaps they will infuse genetically cancer prone individuals who have deficient genes with undamaged cancer fighting oncogenes such nonmutated, functional p53, and p27, etc.

[Lolly]

Also, do no forget that there are dedicated researchers around the country working on various vaccines, such as the Her2 Vaccine. There's now an effective vaccine for cervical cancer, something we wouldn't have thought was possible 20 years ago. Your children will be the beneficiaries. Don't despair.

<3 Lolly

[julierene]

They have already altered an inherited retinal cancer gene, that unfortunately had an additional higher risk of leukemia later down the road for those children.

They created a virus, inserted the proper genetic material to go in and replicate and replace the damaged DNA. It worked! But they later found out there must be another gene working in conjunction with it to have caused the leukemia - that was never a risk factor before with those children. They had to scrap the administration of the virus until they can find out what the other peice of the puzzle is.

It's intensely incredible what they are on the verge of doing.

I repeat my questions;

1. Why has the incidence of breast cancer spiralled in the last seventy years and continues to do so?

2. As I understand it inherited genes are relatively stable. If inherited genes are realativley stable, and breast cancer was much lower 70 or eighty years ago how can genes account for the huge growth?

There has to be a simpler reason - a factor that has changed in the last 70 years and continues to change.

Yes there is a percentage who have mutations that predispose to a very much higer risk of BC. Some people I suspect no matter what they do will fall prey which must be a dreadful feeling. Some with genetic mutations live to a good age and others fall prey to cancer - they dont know why. Somewhere in the region of 10% seems to ba an accepted figure for BC from inherited genetic predisposition.

Yes science is advancing. Yes vaccines will reduce cancers that are tirggered by a particular pathogen, but very unlikely all.

Which if inherited genes have not changed for a large chunk of the breast cancer population still leaves us with the questions what are the key factors that have changed in the last seventy years that are sufficiently influential in the body's metabolism, on a more and more global basis as time passes to be causing this explosion in breast cancer rates.

For me a strong likely candidate is the BALANCE of omega three and six, followed by other contributory changes diet environment etc.

RB

[RobinP]

No doubt diet may play a role in bc development. Still, estrogen seems to be a central cuprid as males do not usually get bc. Just a thought, perhaps birth control and HRT is at least one reason for the rise in breast cancer in more recent years.

[Susan2]

My oncologist believes that my taking birth control for many years was a factor. I have no family history. However, I know that diet has an impact. I know this for certain because during the time between diagnosis and surgery I was able to reduce the size of the tumor through dietary changes alone - without any chemo / radiation etc. The surgeon was shocked by the tumor reduction because he was expecting it to have grown.