Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have demonstrated a method of forecasting which breast cancer patients will suffer heart problems from a commonly used chemotherapy drug.
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have demonstrated a method of forecasting which breast cancer patients will suffer heart problems from a commonly used chemotherapy drug.
The researchers also found that a class of medications already approved by the Food and Drug Administration may mitigate these side effects.
“We could use this method to find out who’s going to develop chemo-related toxicity and who’s not,” said Joseph Wu, MD, PhD, professor of cardiovascular medicine and of radiology and director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute. “And now we have an idea about the cardioprotective medications we can give them.”
A paper describing the work was published online March 14 in Circulation. Wu, who is the Simon H. Stertzer, MD, Professor, is the senior author. Former research fellow Tomoya Kitani, MD, now a clinical assistant professor at the Kyoto Prefecture University of Medicine in Japan, is the lead author.
Read more at Stanford Medicine
Image: Joseph Wu and his collaborators created heart cells known as cardiomyocytes and tested how the cells responded to the effects of the well-known chemotherapy drug Herceptin. (Credit: Steve Fisch)
