Dina Rabinovich and a question about her2 and herceptin
Dina Rabinovich and a question about her2 and herceptin Dina Rabinovich’s latest piece in the Guardian is interesting reading. She questions why the searches for causes of breast cancer are so illusive and alludes to the arguments about profitability in drug development rather than in searching for causes.
She quotes Dr JS de Bono at the Royal Marsden: “Its commercial. The drugs companies won’t put money into diagnosing the structure of tumours, only into cures. We did it here, worked out a test for Her2-but that wasn’t until five years after Herceptin was developed”
Is this correct? I had always thought that the her2 receptor was discovered before herceptin was developed. Does anyone know and can you point me to web links which might explain what Rabinovich says de Bono said.
On general terms I think that yes there is far too little research on the specific structure of individual cancers…I feel this because so little has been done to research what makes triple negative tumours grow.
Jane
Cancer research and drug companies Hi Jane,
always love your posts - so illuminating and thought provoking.
I don’t know anything about the HER2 research situation, but what I do know is that research is/was being done into the causes of all cancers.at the genetic level. My nephew has just done a two year research project into apoptosis of cells, and why cancer cells don’t “commit suicide”. as normal cells do. I can’t really understand the level he works at, so he has to put it into “idiot” language for me. He was funded (poorly - as a Ph.d ,on £26,000 pa) by the Institute of Cancer, located next to the Royal Marsden in Chelsea. He also worked on cancer research at the Paterson Institute, which is part of Christie’s Cancer Hospital in Manchester. Unfortunately, his contract was not renewed - I would guess because of lack of funding. I don’t know if the funding for research projects come directly from drug companies, or just general donations from the public, and I would hope,some funding from the Govmt. Chris has decided to give up biochemistry and is now training as an Accountant as there seems little future in cancer research. How sad is this?
Liz.
her2 Hi Jane,
You knew I’d answer, didn’t you!
I don’t have any websites for you, but according to the book the 800 Million Pill by drug industry critic Merill Goozner, Axel Ullrich of Genentech isolated several oncogenes, including Her2, and Dr Dennis Slamon of UCLA then did most of the work developing herceptin. I checked and Axel and Slamon published an article way back in 1989 on the her2 gene. The technology used to mass produce herceptin was developed in Britain.
Internationally, the only country where the government seems to be really spend lots of money directly on cancer is the US, which spends on the order of 75% of all of the money spent by central governments on medical research (and I don’t think that this figure includes the money spent at lower levels of government in the U.S.). Some of this money has been used in ways that might lower breast cancer incidence, such as that study that showed the dangers of hormone replacement therapy.
Britain is one of the best countries in Europe for funding cancer research, but it still isn’t that wonderful and is overly reliant on lots of small scale fundraising. I remember going on a fundraising walk and being so proud of how much the walk had raised, about £20,000, until my husband pointed out that once all of the overheards were counted in that probably would fund a cancer researcher for a few months maybe (although I think he overestimated how much researchers were getting).
Part of the problem is that some people don’t understand why medical research can’t just be left to the pharmaceuticals industry, but alot of research that might benefit patients (or the public) won’t make money for the drugs companies and they have shareholders to keep happy.