Putting Cancer in the Crosshairs

Community Comments

Genentech Turns 30

By Georgette Jeppesen

With an expanding manufacturing operation in Vacaville, biotechnology research and development giant Genentech continues to “follow the science” to better treatments for people diagnosed with serious illnesses such as Kelly Corrigan.
     In August 2004, a week shy of her 37th birthday and just three months after a negative breast exam by her physician, Corrigan discovered a “7-centimeter mass with tentacles” in her left breast. Hers was a particularly virulent type of cancer, caused by an excess of a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor-2, or HER2. The tumor’s size and lymph-node involvement placed it in the stage-three category, a cancer that four out of 10 women don’t survive.
     She received aggressive chemotherapy to drastically shrink the tumor, followed by a lumpectomy and removal of several lymph nodes, and then six-and-a-half weeks of radiation therapy. Even so, Corrigan, a writer-photographer, wife and mother from Piedmont, was told that her chances for a recurrence within ?ve years were good.
     “But then,” Corrigan says, “(Dr. John Park of the University of California San Francisco Medical Center) called me back into the of?ce after what I thought was our last meeting and said, ‘I have great news. (Genentech’s) Herceptin studies are in, and I think I can take your chances of recurrence from 30 percent to 15 percent if you do a year of Herceptin infusions.’  Fifteen percent is not that different from the average person on the street’s chances of being diagnosed with breast cancer.”

Up Close and Personal
For many years healthcare investment analyst Ted Gomoll has followed bio-technology companies for El Dorado Hills-based research ?rm JM Dutton Associates, but now has personal experience with a biotech product. A friend of his in San Francisco is “alive and well” after being treated for colorectal cancer with Avastin, which his doctor said would not have been the case ?ve years ago.
Continued...

• Share
  • Digg This
  • del.icio.us
  • Newsvine
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Furl It
  • !Y My Web
  • Google
• Email
• Print

Recommend This

Community Comments