Herceptin given prior to surgery improves the chance of survival without relapse for women with HER2-positive breast cancer. Standard one year Herceptin treatment provides long-term benefit to patients with high risk of recurrence.

About 70 per cent of women with locally advanced HER2-positive breast cancer were free of their disease three years after initiation of therapy when treated with Herceptin plus chemotherapy before surgery, compared to only around 50 per cent of patients receiving pre-operative chemotherapy alone. These results from the final analysis of the NOAH (NeOAdjuvant Herceptin) phase-III study will be presented today at the CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS). This is welcome news as patients with this early, but locally advanced breast cancer whose disease has spread to tissues around the breast such as the skin, muscle or lymph nodes generally face a high chance of recurrence and short life-expectancy.

"The positive results of the NOAH study show that starting Herceptin treatment prior to surgery offers long-term benefits to women with HER2-positive breast cancer," said William M Burns, CEO Division Roche Pharmaceuticals. "Herceptin continues to provide women with early breast cancer a much improved prognosis, even if their cancer has advanced locally."

"Women with locally advanced HER2-positive breast cancer are difficult to treat," said Professor Luca Gianni from the Istituto Nazionale Tumori Milano, Milan, Italy, a leading investigator of the NOAH trial. "The results of the NOAH study imply that starting chemotherapy with one year of Herceptin should become the standard of care for women with locally advanced HER2-positive breast cancer."

The aim of pre-surgery (neoadjuvant) therapy given to women with breast cancer is to improve the local control of the tumour to facilitate surgery. At the same time, the objective is to determine the sensitivity of the tumour towards a specific treatment. The NOAH study is the largest randomized phase-III trial evaluating the benefits of giving neoadjuvant Herceptin in combination with chemotherapy versus chemotherapy alone to women with locally advanced HER2-positive breast cancer. The results of this study demonstrate that starting Herceptin treatment prior to surgery helps shrink locally advanced breast cancer and improve long term outcomes.

The NOAH (NeOAdjuvant Herceptin) trial is a multicentre, randomised, open-label trial of 228 patients with centrally confirmed locally Advanced HER2-positive Breast Cancer (LABC), a particularly aggressive form of the disease.

Herceptin is a humanised antibody, designed to target and block the function of HER2, a protein produced by a specific gene with cancer-causing potential.