Joshua Bauml, MD of the University of Pennsylvania discusses the fact that HER2 is over expressed in 60 percent of NSCLC. HER2 is another genetic operation considered in lung cancer. Many think of HER2 in breast cancer where drugs like trastuzumab and lapatinib have a clear role. However, HER2 is found to be over expressed in nearly 60% of non-small-cell lung cancer and mutated in the subgroup.
HER2 mutated patients are non-smokers and predominantly female. Whats interesting is that, not all targeted therapies work in this disease. As an evidence, there was a randomized study with the addition of trastuzumab to chemotherapy and did not show a benefit. However, there are recent studies evaluating ado- trastuzumab emtansine in either HER2 over expression or HER2 mutation setting and showed very nice response rate. This is very exciting for this kind of patient population.
