The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Trastuzumab has been shown to be quite effective in reducing suffering and mortality from breast cancer in both the metastatic 1 and adjuvant settings. 2-5 With short follow-up, remarkably consistent results across five adjuvant, prospective, randomized clinical trials su...

Intrinsic and acquired resistance to the monoclonal antibody drug trastuzumab is a major problem in the treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer. A deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms could help to develop new agents. Our intention was to detect genes and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) affecting trastuzumab efficiency in cell culture. Three HER2-positive breast cancer cell...

OBJECTIVES Trastuzumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody that binds human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), dramatically improves the clinical outcomes of HER2-positive breast cancer. Emerging evidence implied that the clinical behavior and sensitivity to targeted agents in HER2-positive breast cancer differed by hormone receptor (HR) status. The objective of this study was to determine...

To understand the mechanisms leading to trastuzumab resistance in HER2-overexpressing breast tumors, we created trastuzumab-insensitive cell lines (SKBR3/100-8 and BT474/100-2). The cell lines maintain HER2 receptor overexpression and show increase in EGF receptor (EGFR). Upon trastuzumab treatment, SKBR3/100-8 and BT474/100-2 cell lines displayed increased growth rate and invasiveness. The tra...

Trastuzumab and lapatinib provide clinical benefit to women with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER)-positive breast cancer. However, not all patients whose tumors contain the HER2 alteration respond. Consequently, there is an urgent need to identify new predictive factors for these agents. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of receptor tyrosine kinase signaling and ph...

PURPOSE Trastuzumab is a monoclonal antibody targeted to the Her2 receptor and approved for treatment of Her2-positive breast cancer. Among patients who initially respond to trastuzumab therapy, resistance typically arises within 1 year. BT/Her(R) cells are trastuzumab-resistant variants of Her2-positive BT474 breast cancer cells. The salient feature of BT/Her(R) cells is failure to downregulat...

INTRODUCTION This case report and short review discusses how long trastuzumab should be continued in metastatic breast cancer, the safety issues in case of pregnancy and the risk of relapse with trastuzumab cessation. CASE PRESENTATION We present the case of a 34-year-old Caucasian woman with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-positive metastatic breast cancer in the liver who achieved ...

The cardiac toxicity of trastuzumab was studied in chick embryos. Fertilized eggs of White Leghorns were incubated and investigated. Trastuzumab 5 mg/egg (low dose) or 15 mg/egg (high dose) was injected into the air sac of a fertilized egg on the 16th day of incubation. Electrocardiograms (ECGs) were recorded 0 to 60 min after the injection. After low dosing of trastuzumab, the heart rate was n...

The approval of trastuzumab for use in metastatic breast cancer marked a breakthrough in the understanding of the biology of the disease. However, like most cancer therapies, the disease finds a way to advance despite the treatments developed to eradicate it. Although trastuzumab has had a large effect on the treatment of early and advanced-stage disease, a substantial proportion of patients wi...

Some of HER-2 positive breast cancer patients failed to trastuzumab treatment. Recent reports have indicated the correlation between plasma coagulation parameters and clinical characteristics in breast cancer. The aim of this study was to analyze the role of coagulation parameters in trastuzumab treated patients. Coagulation parameters from trastuzumab treated breast cancer patients were retros...