The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 271 No 7269 p439
4 October 2003

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Drug combination improves breast cancer survival

A combination of trastuzumab (Herceptin) and docetaxel (Taxotere) nearly doubles median survival time in women with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer, new data reveal. Results from a study presented at the European Cancer Conference in Copenhagen last week show that women treated with both drugs survived, on average, 24 months compared with 13 months for patients treated with docetaxel alone (P=0.0001). Overall response rate was also better with combination therapy.