UC Davis Cancer Center researchers studied the most popular drug used to treat a quarter of women with breast cancer. It’s called Herceptin and works by stopping the growth of cancerous tumors.

Colleen Sweeney is the lead author. She says it’s likely that Herceptin doesn’t work 50 percent of the time because it’s not stopping all of the cells feeding the cancer.  

Sweeney: “What we would like to do is be able to personalize the therapy we give a patient based on the unique profile their tumor has.” 
 
Sweeney says the next step is to study a larger group and find a way to combine Herceptin with other treatments to improve patients’ outcomes. The Cancer Research journal published the UC Davis findings earlier this month.