title: Optimizing Treatment of HER2-Positive Breast Cancer.
abstract: The treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer has benefited from a number of targeted agents. Although adjuvant trastuzumab has dramatically reduced progression--making metastatic disease far less common today--newer treatment advances are also impacting this disease. Dual targeting with pertuzumab and trastuzumab can extend the survival of metastatic disease by more 16 months, but despite such success, resistance to HER2 targeting remains a challenge. Drugs in the pipeline, such as neratinib, may help meet this therapeutic demand. In addition to anti-HER2 agents, chemotherapy is beneficial to patients with tumors 1 cm or larger, but the optimal treatment of smaller tumors is still a work in progress.
authors.affiliation: Presented by William J. Gradishar, MD, Betsy Bramsen Professor of Breast Oncology, Director of the Maggie Daley Center for Women's Cancer Care at Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois.
authors.forename: William J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Gradishar
mesh_terms: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000378:metabolism; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D018719:Erb-b2 Receptor Tyrosine Kinases / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents; D018719:Erb-b2 Receptor Tyrosine Kinases