Professor of Medicine, Mayo Medical School; Director, Clinical Investigations; and Director, Breast Cancer Program, Division of Hematology/Oncology, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, FL
2007-2008 BCRF Project:
Made possible by generous support from Play For P.I.N.K

Dr. Perez and her colleagues are leading several projects with support from BCRF: 1) They continue to evaluate proteins and gene markers that may help predict the likelihood of responsiveness to the anti-HER2 targeted drug, trastuzumab (Herceptin). 2) A study to evaluate the cardiac safety of the combination of chemotherapy and trastuzumab with the novel HER1/HER2 inhibitor, lapatinib, is now open to patient enrollment, with 11/109 patients enrolled to date. 3) The researchers have successfully overcome all the mechanistic, organizational and regulatory pre-requisites for generating a breast cancer tissue bank and expect to be storing tissues by the end of June 2007. Experiments in the lab have further substantiated the notion that p120 and E-cadherin expression regulate receptor tyrosine kinase signaling and have suggested the possibility that p120 and/or E-cadherin deficient cancer cells may exhibit both trastuzumab and anti-estrogen resistance.

This year, Dr. Perez and her Mayo Clinic colleagues plan to evaluate the long-term cardiac safety of trastuzumab, develop a study to determine whether the cardiac side effects of this agent may be prevented (or at least significantly diminished), and design new initiatives to optimize the understanding of patient outcomes related to HER2 and anti-HER2 therapy.