Conditions: Breast Cancer
Keywords: HER-2 positive breast cancer HER-2 positive breast cancer
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 11
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
Rapamune (generic name: Sirolimus®) is a drug that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (government) for use in patients receiving a kidney transplant to prevent the patient's body from rejecting the transplanted kidney. It has shown antitumor effects in the laboratory, but has not been approved at this time for the treatment of cancer. Herceptin is a new form of chemotherapy that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of breast cancer.

This study is designed to evaluate the effect and safety of combining Rapamune and Herceptin on breast cancer. Rapamune and Herceptin are being combined because results from our laboratory studies suggest that the combination of the two drugs is superior to either drug used alone. Results from laboratory studies performed at other institutions suggest that adding Rapamune to Herceptin may also reverse the resistance to Herceptin. Although there has been extensive experience using Herceptin alone and Rapamune alone in human subjects, the combination of Herceptin and Rapamune has not been previously evaluated. In addition, we hope to better understand how these treatments work against an individual woman's tumor by analyzing tissue samples before, and during treatment.

Detailed description:

Arms:
arm 1: Patients received oral sirolimus 6 mg daily in combination with weekly trastuzumab administered intravenously with a loading dose of 4 mg/kg followed by 2 mg/kg weekly in a 28-day cycle. A subsequent amendment allowed trastuzumab to be administered every 3 weeks for patient convenience, with a loading dose of 8 mg/kg followed by a 6 mg/kg in a 21-day cycle. Sirolimus was administered at a 6 mg oral daily dose. Cycles were repeated on an every 21 or 28-day schedule until disease progression, unacceptable toxicity, or the development of any of the criteria for study removal. Doses were reduced or discontinued based on tolerability.

Interventions: intervention 1: Rapamycin intervention 2: Trastuzumab
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: oral rapamycin 6 mg daily intervention 2: Trastuzumab 4 mg/kg will be administered (intravenous) on day 1, and this will be followed by weekly dose of 2 mg/kg starting day 8.

Protocol document: