Olive oil and Her2 downregulation - question for the propellerheads

[chrisy]

Hi all,

The recent spate of new information and posts on our ever popular olive oil threads brings up a question for me.

The way I am reading this, the active component in olive oil (oleic acid) downregulates Her2 overexpression, or the number of her2 receptors on the cell. It has been shown to be synergistic with Herceptin, which makes sense if part of the action of Herceptin is to inhibit the growth signals by blocking the receptor. It would follow (in my non technical mind) that if oleic acid "downregulates" Her2 by the same mechanism or some other mechanism that reduces the number of available Her2 proteins on the cell, that would be a good thing as it would, like Herceptin, reduce the amount of growth signalling through the Her2.

How am I doing so far?

Now comes my question: Some of our members are in a trial of Herceptin MCC-DM1 (fo shizzah) which is Herceptin with a toxin attached. So it would work by bringing the toxin directly to the cancer cell via the Her2 receptor. In this case, would it be better to have higher overexpression of Her2 so that more of the toxin would reach the cell, and if so, would oleic acid DECREASE the effectiveness of this treatment?

Just when I was about to start dousing my bread in EVOO...