Author(s)

Miao Hong, Peixuan Li, Mengxue Zhang

Corresponding Author

Miao Hong

ABSTRACT

In 2020, 10 million individuals have died of cancer worldwide, with 11.7 % of those dying from breast cancer. Breast cancer is a very common disease in the worldwide. People have been looking for a cure for HER2 breast cancer for years. Surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy are all options. However, the recurrence rate of tumors and the traumatic problems of surgery have not been resolved. Studies have shown that about 20%-30% is HER2 breast cancer and associated with poor prognosis. At the same time, HER2 also provides intervention points for the treatment of breast cancer. Molecular targeted therapy has gradually become a standard therapy and has achieved some success in clinical practice in the past 20 years. Phase II clinical data show that trastuzumab has good safety in the treatment of breast cancer patients with HER2 overexpression, is effective as a single treatment, and can cause a prolonged objective tumor response. Trastuzumab cannot, however, be used to treat all cases of HER2 overexpression. Therefore, drugs of the next generation have also been approved, such as pertuzumab and ado-trastuzumab emtansine. This review will focus on elucidating the mechanism and clinical effects of trastuzumab in the treatment of HER-2 breast cancer, and briefly describe its toxicity and drug resistance.

KEYWORDS

Human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER2), breast cancer, trastuzumab, pertuzumab, clinical trial