Biopharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca PLC recently announced that its breast cancer drug Enhertu, based on the results of a large clinical trial on around 500 women, was able to significantly reduce disease progression and the risk of death in women in advanced stages of the disease. AstraZeneca’s head of oncology, Dave Fredrickson, stated that the company had never seen a magnitude of benefit like this in metastatic breast cancer before.
Clinical Trial Results
Enhertu has demonstrated a higher success rate than the current breast cancer drug, Roche Holding AG’s Kadcyla, in managing tumor progression and death risk for women with metastatic breast cancer, an advanced form of the disease. In the clinical trial results, 75.8% of women who were treated with Enhertu had no disease progression one year into treatment. This was in comparison to 34.1% of the women who were treated with Kadcyla who had no disease progression one year on into treatment.
Enhertu’s Current Application and Potential
In women who are currently undergoing treatment for advanced HER2-positive breast cancer, Enhertu is used as a third-line treatment. In other words, it is used as the next mode of treatment once two forms of treatment have already been used without showing results in stopping disease progression. The latest clinical trial results are a positive sign that the drug may find use earlier on in breast cancer treatment. There is also potential for the drug to be used in combating early-stage illness as well as other forms of cancer.
Traditional chemotherapy is unable to differentiate between tumor cells and normal, healthy cells. Enhertu works specifically to deliver chemotherapy at the site of the tumors, staying clear of healthy cells.
Javier Cortés, who heads the International Breast Cancer Center in Barcelona and is also one of the trial’s lead investigators, said that the results of the clinical trial meant that Enhertu had the potential to become the new standard of care for women with HER2 positive breast cancer.
