more from ASCO

[Lani]

Spent from 8am until 930 pm attending her2 bc posters, talks, dinner program

(only stepped out for talks on new nanotechnology, some sarcoma posters, talks on second cancers in cancer survivors, and talks on new treatments for some non colorectal GI tumors--all taking up less than two hours.

Rather exhausted and need to pack but will try to "put it all together"

Dr. Edith Perez this evening was rather positive on navelbine as easier chemo to combine with herceptin….all were talking about adding Goserelin to AIs in her2+ or her2- ER+ bc.

Less evidence on best way to treat ER+her2+ bc than ER-her2+ bc but both benefit equally from addition of herceptin and/or pertumab or treatment w TDM1 it seems. Lapatinib will probably be used less often after the ALLTO trial interim results reported here yesterday, with or without herceptin.

TDM1 DOES seem to get to brain mets and there are many exciting trials which
should be reporting within the next year.

Those at the dinner meeting tonight, which should be available to listen to online later as it was presented by RESEARCH TO PRACTICE (dr. neil love)
Drs. Perez, Blackwell, Pegram, Andrem and Burstein were much more enthusiastic about working out the best combo of her2 treatments as well as best immunologic treatments than yesterday's crew.

Talked with lots of poster presenters including one who is studying those Stage IVs who have survived NED for years trying to figure out what it is about their tumors which made this possible. His series (and the others he knows about) finds these long-lived survivors amount to 9% of those treated. Looking at this board (which is no way reflective of all her2+ BC PATIENTS), the number would seem much higher, but of course, this board consists of those who may be more internet savvy, motivated, perhaps educated and otherwise not representative of the majority of her2+ patients.

I suggested he might want to peruse the site and offered to see if we can help him in his research. Wouldn't everyone want to know what it is about those who do so well they are considered "cured"?