Chemotherapy and Lapatinib or Trastuzumab in Treating Women With HER2/Neu-Positive Metastatic Breast Cancer

• Status: Active, not recruiting
• Trial end date: 2022-12-31

Summary

RATIONALE: HER2/neu is a receptor (protein) which is found in unusually high amounts in approximately 1 in 5 cancer patients. Scientific evidence suggests that having high amounts of the HER2/neu receptor is important for breast cancer to grow and spread. Women with previously untreated metastatic breast cancer (breast cancer that has spread to other organs) and with high levels of the HER2/neu receptor receive as their usual treatment chemotherapy with one of the approved chemotherapy drugs paclitaxel or docetaxel (called "taxanes") together with another approved drug called "trastuzumab". Chemotherapy drugs, such as paclitaxel and docetaxel, work either by killing tumour cells or by stopping them from dividing. Trastuzumab is an antibody that is given through a vein in the arm and it works by specifically "targeting" the HER2/neu i.e. it attaches to it and "turns it off". Although some of the patients who receive this taxane plus trastuzumab treatment feel better for some months, the cancer usually starts to grow again. Lapatinib is a new drug. Like trastuzumab, it also works by specifically "targeting" the HER2/neu receptor, but it does so in a different way. Lapatinib is not an antibody. It is a pill that is taken daily by mouth. Because lapatinib works in a different way than trastuzumab, it may be worse, as good as or better than trastuzumab in keeping metastatic HER/neu positive cancer from growing. However, this is not known.

Purpose: This randomized Phase III trial is comparing chemotherapy (a taxane) given together with lapatinib with chemotherapy (a taxane) given together with trastuzumab in women with HER2/neu positive breast cancer.

• Phase: Phase 3

Details

• Lead Sponsor: Novartis; Novartis Pharmaceuticals
• Collaborator: NCIC Clinical Trials Group
• Treatments: Docetaxel; Lapatinib; Paclitaxel; Taxane; Trastuzumab