PTEN test and latest Herceptin news

[West Coast]

Someone mentioned a PTEN test that determines if Herceptin is effective with an individual. Does anyone know about this test and do you think it would be useful to have to see if the Herceptin will or is working? Is the test expensive?

[*_Kim in DC_*]

The only place I know of for sure is MD Anderson. Below is information I received from another website. Obviously you need to verify this info for yourself.
"MD Anderson said that their studies show that 89% of the HER2+ patients with active PTEN respond to herceptin, but only 11% of those with low PTEN proteins respond to herceptin.
They are thinking of dropping herceptin for those who don't make much PTEN protean.

Lab studies have shown that the lack of PTEN can be made up by suppressing PI3K enzymes.


There are several experimental PI3k inhibitors, and they are planning to use them with herceptin for her2+ people, but they aren’t ready for prime time yet.

effect of Herceptin, I thought I'd mention it would also improve many chemo's.
It looks like the developed targeted PI3K inhibitors might be a effective chemo by itself.
The trick of course is to get it to hit the cancer cells as selectively as possible.

Here is the company with the most advanced product I've found the most data on, they've done animal tests but not human tests, but plan starting those 'in the next few months'. This is probably the one MD Anderson is looking at.

http://www.semaforepharma.com/home.htm

It looks like theve made the inhibitor as finely as possible, and have done a lot of work on delivery vehicles to maximise the absorption by cancer cells, and minimise on other cells.(this would probably be liptase combo or coat like the new targeted Taxol uses (I wish this was the mainstream version of Taxol, but it's still finishing testing))



The targeted PI3K inhibitor is SF1126, it looks like they've been focussing on brain, lung and prostate cancer in the animal tests, however this is a universal cell target so should work on almost any cancer the same way, it would probably work better on highly vascular cancers because of the delivery vehicle they're working on.

The 3 year plan the have has it just reaching phase 2 human testing for most tumor types, but then this is dangerious stuff so they have to be careful. "

The information I copied above was interpreted by a non medical professional so again, I ask you to do some of your own research. I just thought this would give you a good place to start.

Kim in DC

[Lolly]

Also, try the search function using "pten", you'll bring up all the posts about it.

[al from canada]

Hello Ladies,
I have personally done a fair amount of research into P13K and I think this amybe be one of our next targetted therapies that shows success. Wormannin is the most common one in use and to date I have found no natural P13K inhibitor. A very long and technical article can be found here:
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/ytchang/reprint...id%20review.pdf (http://www.nyu.edu/classes/ytchang/reprint/2001%20Lipid%20review.pdf)

Al

[*_Kim in DC_*]

Al,

It has been mentioned to me that St John's Wart is a natural P13k inhibitor.
However, St John's wart might interfere with other Chemo's. I haven't the slightest idea how to research the validity of these claims. I'm just throwing it out there.


Kim