Study gives hope of narrowing breast cancer chemo

[Lone_Star_Dem]

Source: Houston Chronicle

Researchers have learned how to target chemotherapy for breast cancer to only those women most likely to benefit, an advance that should spare roughly 20,000 women annually from unnecessary side effects.

The study by the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and other institutions found that women with the most common form of breast cancer didn't gain any benefit from the widely prescribed drug Taxol.

But those with overactive HER-2 genes — about 15 percent to 20 percent of women with breast cancer — were helped.

"We hope this discovery one day marks an end to the one-size-fits-all approach of chemotherapy," said Dr. Daniel Hayes, clinical director of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center's breast oncology program and the study's lead author.llkomm's identifying information.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/5204779.html