blockbuster

Blockbuster

Herceptin is a drug that is used for breast cancer. It shrinks the size of the tumor which makes it easier to control and allows some of the patients to live longer. It also stops the outside of the cancer cells to stop growing so that the cells don’t divide uncontrollably. It has only been used on twenty to twenty-five percent of woman who have breast cancer. It hasn’t been proven that this drug is useful on other cancers. A scientist from Health and Science University in Oregon named Adelman, is studying a new protein that he believes can be the cure for breast cancer. Adelman is also studying a chemical compound that has characteristics of this new protein. This protein is called the HER2 protein. It’s a small piece of the receptor component that comes through the cell’s domain. They say that when the cell that uses the HER2 protein needs a protein, it turns a gene into RNA and cuts out copies of DNA segments that are not used. Cancer cells sometimes have more cell-surface receptors than normal cells. Normally a cell uses a chemical signal to get a message to start replication, but since a decoy imitation of this receptor is involved the transmission of the chemical signal is set off. So scientists are testing a large amount of solid tumors to explore many methods of inhibiting receptors. Many drugs for beast cancer that are supposed to shrink the size of the tumor react negatively to herceptin. Scientists have studied different treatments for breast cancer for a long time. They hope to start chemical trial on mice to test the protein’s interaction with many receptors.
This article explains how herceptin affects other drugs and the depth of the problem with it not working with other drugs or proteins. It tells the science behind cancer treatment and how and why many solid tumors were tested and why some failed.