According to researchers the doses are administered to patients in conjunction with chemothearpy, after Herceptin fails. Herceptin is the first developed human antibody approved for the treatment of HER2-positive metastatic (advanced stage) breast cancer.
The results, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that the drug Tykerb benefited the women undergoing the study by delaying the spread of their disease to other parts of the body.
According to The Age newspaper, the reseach revaled that the women on the combined treatment had an average wait of 36.9 weeks before the disease spread, compared with 19.7 weeks for women on chemotherapy alone.
The study was reportedly carried out on more than 300 women, including several Australians.
Co-author Arlene Chan, a breast cancer oncologist at the Mount Hospital in Perth also added that the new drug also stands a good chance to help eliminate some early-stage breast cancers.
"The exciting thing about a trial like this in advanced breast cancer is that ... it usually translates into the drug being available to be used in the early setting," she said.
She continued, "This agent is now already being investigated in a number of large international clinical trials for women with early breast cancer."
The research findidngs reveal that this latest finding is succeful in patients whose breast cancer carries the HER2 receptor, a factor that helps tumour cells to proliferate and grow more quickly.
Hospital records show that up to 20 percent of breast cancers are HER2-positive.
Furthermore in other news related to this story, the Federal Government has also agreed to subsidize the other drug Herceptin, which is also used in the treatment but targets the HER2 receptor, in a slightly different way.
