Maintenance Therapy
It is not clear if adding treatment of any kind to the standard first six treatments with chemotherapy for advanced ovarian cancer can improve your chances for a cure. Various chemotherapy drugs and some “biological” agents have been studied and continue to be studied. The question is the subject of some very exciting research.Erlotinib or Tarceva
Erlotinib is a “biological” agent used to treat certain types of lung cancer and has been used in combination with gemcitabine chemotherapy to treat pancreatic cancer. It is a type of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor, and is also called erlotinib hydrochloride, CP-358,774, OSI-774, and Tarceva. These are technical terms that you can research further, but the most important information is in the next few paragraphs.EGFR is produced or “over-expressed” by the cells of many cancers, including ovarian. When present in large amounts on cancer cells it often means the cancer is more aggressive and spreads or metastasizes readily. EGFR also protects cancer cells from chemotherapy effect.
Basically erlotonib stops the growth of tumor cells by blocking an important enzyme needed for cancer cell growth. The technical description is inhibition of EGF receptor tyrosine kinase (the enzyme) activity. This tyrosine kinase activating receptor is a protein which is present in large quantities or not based on activity of the EGFR gene. This represents a very cutting edge targeted “biological” approach to cancer treatment.
