Wonder drug kills off breast tumours

A WONDER drug being used before surgery to fight an aggressive form of breast cancer is reducing the need for mastectomies.

Using Herceptin together with chemotherapy before surgery shrinks and in many cases eradicates the tumours, research shows.

It eradicated tumours in 43% of patients with HER-2 positive breast cancer — almost twice as many as for patients treated with chemotherapy alone (23%).