Thursday, February 3, 2011

Herceptin

I totally rocked it at work today, meaning that it was one of my most productive days since getting cancer.  Maybe I've finally figured out how to ignore the fact that I have cancer?  Or how to effectively distract myself with other things?  Regardless, I'm still feeling very science-y right now, and I feel inspired to bring the science to the cancer side of my life via the blog.  I haven't done that in awhile.

Today's lesson is on how herceptin works.  This is one of my chemo drugs that is specific for my type of cancer (HER2+), and I take it every week for the time being.  To understand how herceptin works, first we need to know that breast cells have a protein on their surface called HER2.  This protein sends a signal to the nucleus that tells the cell to divide.  So-called HER2+ breast cancer cells have too many HER2 proteins on their surface, resulting in too much cell division.  Too much cell division basically results in a tumor, although something must be slightly different in the case of inflammatory breast cancer because there's not exactly a tumor.  Anyway, here's a figure illustrating what I just said, taken from www.herceptin.com:
 Now that we have cancer cells with too many HER2 proteins on their surface, we can see that one way to focus on these cells and not other cells in the body would be to target the HER2.  And that's what herceptin does.  It is an antibody that binds to the HER2 protein, blocking the signal to the nucleus.
Pretty amazing, huh?  I'm just glad that I'm finally to a point where I can research aspects of my own cancer.  It took a surprisingly long time to get to this place.    

10 comments:

  1. How amazing you are! Great graphics and what a wonderful way to explain things. I really feel that book coming on.

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  2. I'm so thankful for Herceptin and for you! I heard there is a Lifetime movie about the person who developed Herceptin. If Angela from Whose the Boss is in it, I will track it down! Love you! Mallary

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  3. So HER2 proteins aren't active on any other cells?

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  4. "although something must be slightly different in the case of inflammatory breast cancer because there's not exactly a tumor. "

    Joke: "it's not a toomah!"

    Serious question: if it's not exactly a tumor, then what is it? You don't have to answer now. But I would be interested in knowing. And you do a better job than Wikipedia of explaining.

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  5. Man is not weak; knowledge is more than equivalent to force.

    Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) British author.

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  6. i am sorry about your caner i wish i can help you to got butter soon can you tell me i can do for you i no you are sick bout one to help i do any thing for you because i love you you are my siser in law mybe you can help me if you can i got streed out when you are sick like this thank you i talk to on friday night

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  7. mybe i can help you with the girl some time plases ian can bring him to my apt on satday after nap like three threety if i can thanks

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  8. mybe we can do a girl night out to together you can pick want we can do i can make dinner and we talk bout it i love you a lot and i alway do

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  9. To explain the "not exactly a tumor" part: my cancer manifests as some inflamed breast tissue. There's no lump of any size to remove. Just some oddly firm (swollen?) breast tissue that kept spreading and eventually turned the above skin red. This is why the diagnosis took so long, I suppose (see Prologue).

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