Upbeat19 out of 20: a new breast-cancer pairing answers in almost every patient
In a small first study in China, a new drug pairing shrank tumours in 19 of the 20 women who received it as their first treatment for advanced HER2-positive breast cancer — and the cancer was kept under control in all 20. The drug, IBI354, works like a guided delivery van: an antibody finds the HER2 marker on cancer cells and drops a cancer-killing payload directly inside. Drugs of this type often cause a serious lung inflammation, but none appeared in this study, and only 4 of the 20 women had severe side effects. Professor Xiaohua Zeng of Chongqing University Cancer Hospital presented the results at the ESMO congress in Madrid, and a larger Phase 3 trial is already under way to check whether the early promise holds.
SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation