Inflammatory breast cancer
The drug lapatinib could be used to treat aggressive inflammatory breast cancer suggest the findings of a recent study.
For patients resistant to conventional anthracycline or taxane and trastuzumab, treatment options are limited. Lapatinib inhibits HER2, a protein that’s expressed much more in inflammatory breast cancer than in other, less aggressive breast cancers.
The study included 126 women who took 1,500 milligrams of lapatinib once a day. None of them showed a full response to the drug, but 39% had a partial response, the researchers reported. Median progression-free survival was 15 weeks and, at 6 months, 22% of the women were still progression-free.
