[dlaxague]

Sorry, Linda, we kind of took over your thread with more complicated things than you were probably looking for.

I did find a few references that say they could not find a relation between Herceptin response and benefit from Herceptin:

Dr. Worta McCaskill-Stevens (National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, USA) presented new data from the HERceptin Adjuvant (HERA) trial showing that the level of HER2 amplification does not predict if a patient will derive any disease-free survival (DFS) benefit from treatment with trastuzumab. McCaskill-Stevens' co-investigators found no significant interaction between HER2 amplification determined by central fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) testing and the relative DFS benefit of trastuzumab.
http://tinyurl.com/62adc2

"Patient and disease characteristics are presented in Table 1. Twenty-nine patients (64%) achieved pCR after 24 weeks of preoperative therapy. Age, nuclear grade, tumor size, nodal status, clinical ER status, and HER-2 gene amplification level, as detected by FISH, showed no significant association with pCR in either univariate or multivariate logistic regression analyses."
(small neoadjuvant study):
http://tinyurl.com/5rwhws

So once again, it appears that the answer may be - no answer (yet).
Debbie Laxague