Who might benefit from treatment with Herceptin?
Herceptin works only on cancers that express large amounts of HER-2. Before recommending this treatment, your physician must request that your tumor be tested for HER-2 expression. If your initial surgery was performed at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, we can request that our Pathology Department obtain a piece of the tumor stored at that time. If your surgery was performed at another hospital, we will ask you to sign a release so that we can attempt to obtain the tumor specimen for testing. If the tumor cannot be obtained or if there is insufficient tumor and if you have disease that can easily be biopsied, it may be possible to obtain a new piece of tumor for testing. Herceptin does not work on tumors that do not express the HER-2 protein or that express it only weakly. Herceptin will not be administered to patients with negative or weakly positive tests or to patients whose tumors cannot be tested. Herceptin is currently approved only for patients with metastatic breast cancer. Hercepti
