Breast cancer mets to Uterus

[MJsHusband]

But, in my wife's case, Herceptin failed on its own. That's all she was on when her breast cancer spread to her uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes and lymph nodes. The Taxetere, Carboplatin with Herceptin did a great job taking care of the original mets to her liver. Why wouldn't Herceptin, by itself, be able to keep her breast cancer in check? There is no chemo drug failure to blame here.

[Lani]

You are missing the concepts of both synergism and of blocking multiple pathways of escape

A +B can work even if A or B alone do not


If you have a puppy who wants to escape the house and play in the backyard, locking the front door may not be enough. As it grows up and learns more it may escape out the back door. As it grows up even more and can jump it, it may jump on top of the dresser and hop out the open window.

Just because other chemos don't work, it doesn't mean that there aren't chemos to close other open windows. and reopening the front door but closing more windows definitely is not the best way.

her2 is the front door and herceptin has proven better than lapatinib in closing that front door so side windows of the front door don't open up soon. Closing the front door and its side windows is especially good. ie tykerb+herceptin

Hope this helps

[Lani]

MJs husband:

I went to entrez pubmed via google and put in breast cancer metastasis uterus and found a handful of papers back to 2006---stopped there there may be more

These usually involved lobular or signet ring histology of the initial breast cancer (one case metaplastic, though).

Was your wife's lobular or ductal? or one of the others?

Hope this helps