"...an Antibody, a special immune Protein, that targets products of the HER-2/neu OncoGene. It is often used as a treatment for women with metastatic BreastCancer that overexpresses the HER-2/neu OncoGene."

http://www.breastcancer.org/ren_report_2001_5.html#chemo

"The drug only appears to work for women whose BreastCancer Cells carry extra copies of a protein called HER2 (also written HER2/neu)."

http://imaginis.com/breasthealth/herceptin.asp

After developing Herceptin, Genetech (?) could not get it approved by the USA FoodAndDrugAdministration. It was below the threshold; 1/3rd of all patients responded to it {?}. So they sorted their patient group into two "strata", one responders and the other non-responders. Then they determined a genetic difference between the two groups and (possibly) declared this was the causative discrimination between the groups.

This can be viewed as either AZT-style market manipulation, or one of the wonders of IndividualizedMedicine, depending on your point of view.

Herceptin is the subject of a number of smarmy patient-oriented e-commerce sites...

http://www.herceptin.com/ http://www.herceptin.nl/ (under construction at this time)

CategoryProtein