Finnish treatment breakthrough reduces breast cancer deaths by a third

More effective and cheaper treatment may prove useful for cancer patients in poorer countries

Heikki Joensuu

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Finnish cancer researchers have had an important breakthrough in the treatment of breast cancer. A new treatment protocol developed in Finland reduces the renewal risk of aggressive breast cancer and the consequent deaths by as much as a third.
      “The new treatment form, trastuzumab, is one of the greatest advances in the past 15-20 years in the field of breast cancer research”, says Petri Bono, Chief Physician at the Department of Medical Oncology, Helsinki University Hospital.
      Around 4,100 Finnish women will contract breast cancer each year.
     
In the treatment regime the Finnish scientists targeted a protein called HER2.
      HER2 is a growth factor protein, which transmits growth signals to breast cancer cells
      The protein is the cause of the so-called HER-positive breast cancer. This cancer type is often difficult and aggressive and it has a strong tendency to send metastases to other parts of the body. Hence the illness’s prognosis has traditionally been bad.
     
About 15 per cent of all the breast cancer patients suffer from this aggressive type. In most such cases the first treatment step is the removal of the cancerous tumour.
      If the renewal risk of the cancer is significant, cytostatic treatment is commenced after the operation. This lowers the risk of renewal of the cancer by 40 per cent among patients under the age of 50. The risk of dying of the illness is cut down by 30 per cent. The cytostatic treatment is administered intravenously at cancer clinics.
      For the HER-positive breast cancer patients, the Finnish researchers also gave trastuzumab in connection with their cytostatic treatment. Trastuzumab blocks the effects of the growth factor protein HER2 by binding to it.
     
Previously similar treatments have been experimented with elsewhere in regimens that have lasted for a year and a half.
      What is distinctive to the Finnish regimen is its shortness.
      The treatment only lasts for nine weeks.
      The shorter treatment is easier for the patient and cheaper for the society. The 18-month programme comes with a price tag of EUR 35,000.
      “There are many countries in the world that cannot afford to provide their citizens with such expensive treatments”, says Academy Professor Heikki Joensuu, who heads the research project.
      The Finnish model would shorten the treatment and lower its cost to a sixth.
     
The Finnish study’s results were astoundingly good.
      Five years after contracting the illness, 92.5 per cent of the patients were still alive without the re-emergence of the cancer.
      The risks of renewal of the cancer or deaths caused by it were reduced by a third.
      “This is an excellent result, for nearly all of the patients who took part in the study had an aggressive cancer type that had caused metastases to appear in the armpit”, Joensuu says.
The Finnish study has caused excitement around the world.
      Encouraged by the results, a large-scale international follow-up research programme has been commenced.
      This is needed, because the test group in the Finnish study was fairly small, consisting only of just over a hundred women.
      In the international research project called SOLD, the new treatment form is being tested on 3,000 patients.
      "If the Finnish treatment protocol proves equally successful even with the larger test group, it will enable more efficient treating of breast cancer patients especially in poorer countries, for example in Eastern Europe, South America, Asia, Africa…” Joensuu believes.
     
Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer among women.
      Around 1.3 million women around the globe contract the illness each year. Its prognosis, however, has improved greatly in recent years.
      Each year breast cancer kills about 850 women in Finland and half a million worldwide.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  New drug found effective in fighting early outbreak of breast cancer (21.5.2002)

Links:
  The Synergism Or Long Duration (SOLD) Study
  Trastuzumab (Wikipedia)

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