Her-2: The Making of Herceptin, a Revolutionary Treatment for Breast Cancer

nice journalistic style, great to read the back story of Herceptin

Alles gut

A good read with lots of technical data. I'm still confused about how herceptin works, but very glad it does!

現代医学の治療の中心となりつつある、分子標的治療薬ハーセプチンの伝説的物語。チロシンキナーゼの発見から、分子標的薬治療の進歩、その中、なんども中断の危機に見舞われながらなんとか商品として世に登場したハーセプチン。最先端の医薬品が、極めて人間臭い物語によって世に出たことに感心することしきり。

A compelling read about the discovery of the drug Herceptin. My education crossed paths with both Dr. Dennis Salmon and Dr. John Glaspy during my internship at UCLA in 1992. Both of them were my attending physicians during my internship. In fact, my first rotation out of medical school (from UCSF) was on the solid oncology unit at UCLA and a few short months later it was on the bone marrow transplant unit. I encountered many deathly sick patients and sadly many died. I wish I knew what Dr. Slamon and Dr. Glaspy were doing at the very time of my internship to help save the lives of their patients. They are to be commended for advancing the treatments for breast cancer. All these years later I wish that my internship had started with one of the oncology attendings telling me this: "Your internship is going to suck. You will take care of devastatingly sick patients many of whom will die. You will be fatigued and get little sleep. You will become attached to them and feel the pain that they and their families go through. And often, it will be hopeless, but we want you to know that as you are on the wards taking care of them we are working on the advances that one day will help to save their lives. If I had only known about those first patients ever to receive HERCEPTIN it might have changed not only my year of internship but all the years since. I recognize that it is in the 26 years since doing my internship that many new treatments have in fact come along to save or at least add years to people's lives. It was 9 years after my internship that the drug GLEEVEC was approved--I wish it had been available to save the life of one of my patients, JK. I watched as the attendings and fellows and residents and myself were completely helpless in saving him. Robert Bazell is to be commended for not only reporting the science, but the politics and bureaucracy of bringing a life saving drug to market.