Enhertu, an HER2-targeting antibody drug, was reported to have strong benefits in metastatic HER2+ breast cancer, advanced gastric cancer, and non-small cell lung cancer during a presentation at the European Society for Medical Oncology.
Enhertu more than doubled the performance effectiveness of current drug Kadcyla.
Kadcyla is a combination of Herceptin and the chemotherapy medicine emtansine. Emtansine is a standard chemotherapy, and the idea is that by binding it to Herceptin, which specifically targets HER2, the chemotherapy is also targeted to HER2, and thus more effective and less harmful to the body as a whole.
You may remember all the fuss about ‘wonder drug’ Herceptin more than a decade ago. Well, we now have the DESTINY-Breast03 study, which compared Enhertu and Kadcyla head-to-head as a second-line treatment for metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer that grows after being treated with Herceptin and Docetaxol or Paclitaxol chemotherapy.
Enhertu is given by IV every three weeks and is a combination of three compounds:
i) Fam-trastuzumab (basically, Herceptin)
ii) DXd - which is a chemotherapy called a topoisomerase I inhibitor, which stops cancer cells replicating
iii) A linking compound binding these two.
Enhertu is called an antibody-drug conjugate targeted therapy.
257 people were followed for Enhertu, and 261 for Kadcyla. The estimated 12-month progression-free survival rates were:
- 75.8% for people who received Enhertu
- 34.1% for people who received Kadcyla
In fact, another measure used is median-free progression. With Kadcyla it was 6.8 months meaning half the women had cancer progression before 6.8 months and half afterwards. With Enhertu, this figure could not be calculated as many women had no progression at all after 1 year.
The research findings were presented at the ESMO conference in September 2021.
Go to: Five Natural Compounds that help fight HER2 cancer
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Reference
- ESMO Conference presentation