Helios Berlin-Buch: Groundbreaking success in breast cancer treatment

19/02/2025 08:02

In a recently published breast cancer study, an international research team, in which Helios Berlin-Buch Chief Physician Prof. Dr. Michael Untch was also involved, has achieved a significant advance in medicine: With an antibody-drug conjugate, nine out of ten patients suffering from a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer are still alive after more than eight years.

Prof. Dr. Michael Untch, Chief Physician at the Clinic for Gynaecology and Obstetrics and Head of the certified centers for breast cancer and gynaecological cancers at Helios Hospital Berlin-Buch, has been researching breast cancer for over 30 years. In women with the particularly aggressive HER2-positive breast cancer, diseased tissue often remains in the body after initial treatment. These women then have a high risk of the cancer returning or worsening. Around a third of women suffer recurrences or die from their disease. According to the findings now available, this proportion could be reduced to less than 20 percent with the newly investigated form of treatment.

In the study called KATHERINE, which was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Prof. Dr. Untch and his colleagues investigated whether the antibody-drug conjugate T-DM1 (trastuzumab emtansine) works better in follow-up treatment than the previously used drug trastuzumab.

"In our study, half of the patients received the antibody-drug conjugate T-DM1 after surgery, while the other half were treated with the antibody trastuzumab alone. The survival of patients treated with the antibody-drug conjugate was improved by a third in relative terms. About 10 years after the start of the study, 89.1 percent of these patients are still alive."

- Prof. Dr. med. Michael Untch, Chief Physician Obstetrics and Gynecology | Helios Hospital Berlin-Buch

In addition, treatment with the antibody-drug conjugate significantly reduces the risk of disease recurrence: with T-DM1, 80 percent of women were free of disease recurrence eight years after treatment. In comparison with trastuzumab, the figure was 66 percent - 14 percent less.

"The antibody-drug conjugate T-DM1 is a more effective treatment option for women who still have cancerous tissue in the breast and/or lymph nodes after the first therapy before surgery consisting of chemotherapy and antibodies. It significantly reduces the risk of recurrence and improves the chances of survival. We have thus achieved a significant advance in breast cancer treatment that is relevant for patients," says Prof. Dr. Untch, summarizing the study results.

What are antibody-drug conjugates?

Chemically, every antibody-drug conjugate consists of three elements: a monoclonal antibody, the cytostatic agent (payload), which is intended to combat and destroy the cancer cell and neighboring cancer cells, and the linker, which connects the two substances. It only works when the conjugate is in place and docks to a cancer cell. The cancer drug is combined with the monoclonal antibodies using the innovative linker technology. These consist of proteins and are able to find certain proteins on the surface of tumor cells and dock onto them. The special thing about this is that the antibody-drug conjugates allow a much more targeted and therefore very effective form of therapy to be carried out.

The antibody-drug conjugate T-DM1 is used in patients who have been pre-treated with antibodies and chemotherapy prior to surgery and in whom this therapy has not shrunk the tumor in the breast and lymph nodes sufficiently.

The most important results of the KATHERINE study at a glance:

Patients with HER2-positive breast cancer who were additionally treated with the antibody-drug conjugate T-DM1 have a relatively one-third lower risk of the cancer metastasizing or dying from the cancer than HER2 breast cancer patients who were treated with chemotherapy and antibodies alone.
With T-DM1, 80 percent of women were free of disease relapse eight years after treatment. With trastuzumab, the figure was only 66 percent - i.e. 14 percent less. This means that treatment with T-DM1 significantly reduces the risk of disease recurrence.
After seven years, 89.1 percent of women who received T-DM1 were alive, compared to 84.4 percent in the trastuzumab group. This shows that T-DM1 also improves the chances of survival.
Relapses or metastases or deaths were observed in 146 patients (19.7 percent) in the T-DM1 group and in 239 (32.2 percent) in the trastuzumab group

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