Efficacy of trastuzumab treatment in a metastatic mouse model of HER2 overexpressing human esophageal adenocarcinoma

One of the main challenges of cancer therapy is the prevention of severe side effects often observed during conventional chemotherapies that affect non-malignant cells also. Therefore, a range of targeted therapies have been developed utilizing unique tumor cell characteristics for the mode of pharmacological action. One prominent example of targeted therapy is the treatment of human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER)2-positive breast cancer patients with the humanized monoclonal antibody trastuzumab (Herceptin ®). HER2 activates several downstream signalling pathways involved in tumor cell proliferation, mi…