A New Breast Cancer Drug
Results of a trial of Enhertu (trastuzumab deruxtecan) were presented at the 2022 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Enhertu is a specifically engineered HER2-directed antibody drug conjugate which looks for breast cancer cells, binds to the HER2 protein on their surface and then delivers a powerful dose of chemotherapy right to the tumour. It contains two anti-cancer drugs to form one type of treatment. Trastuzumab is a targeted therapy drug and deruxtecan is a chemotherapy drug. To date Enhertu has been approved in the UK for the treatment of HER2-positive inoperable or metastatic breast cancer in adults who have already received two or more anti-HER2 treatments. This latest research has found that HER2-negative breast cancers have high enough levels of HER2 protein for the drug to work on them. UK medical regulators will now consider whether Enhertu should be approved for a wider group of breast cancer patients.
