HER2 Support Group Forums - View Single Post - Herceptin without chemo

Lani · 03-22-2006, 11:46 PM

Tom, another way to view the serendipity of giving radiation therapy and herceptin at the same time is based on on studies done to develop dendritic cell vaccines and individual vaccines for cancer ie, that the immune system requires antigen to instruct the natural killer cells what to "go after " and perhaps that is also why Herceptin seems to work better with concommitant chemotherapy vs sequential.

A wonderful trial would be to give Herceptin and radiation therapy vs Herceptin and chemo to patients whose age/preexisting conditions do not allow them to tolerate chemo (I doubt the way clinical trials work, merely adding a new agent to the "tried and true" no matter how effective/ineffective rather than trying to find the least amount of the least toxic agent/combination to do the job).

I HOPE we all live long enough to see such a study--not a lot of money in it, not a large number of candidates for the study etc.

03-22-2006, 11:46 PM	#5
Lani Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 4,783	Lani Tom, another way to view the serendipity of giving radiation therapy and herceptin at the same time is based on on studies done to develop dendritic cell vaccines and individual vaccines for cancer ie, that the immune system requires antigen to instruct the natural killer cells what to "go after " and perhaps that is also why Herceptin seems to work better with concommitant chemotherapy vs sequential. A wonderful trial would be to give Herceptin and radiation therapy vs Herceptin and chemo to patients whose age/preexisting conditions do not allow them to tolerate chemo (I doubt the way clinical trials work, merely adding a new agent to the "tried and true" no matter how effective/ineffective rather than trying to find the least amount of the least toxic agent/combination to do the job). I HOPE we all live long enough to see such a study--not a lot of money in it, not a large number of candidates for the study etc.