Datroway is part of a new class of medications called antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs).
These drugs work like guided missiles to deliver chemotherapy directly to cancer cells.
Standard chemotherapy treatments, meanwhile, introduce chemicals that can affect the whole body.
Illustration by Julie Bang for Verywell Health
We are always pleased to have another tool in our arsenal to treat this kind of breast cancer.
As time goes on, we’ll have a better sense of where to fit that therapy in.
Datroway is the second ADC developed by the pharmaceutical companies Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca to get FDA approval.
Enhertu was also approved for HER2-positive forms of lung cancer and gastric cancer.
Participants were treated once every three weeks.
Those who received Datroway saw about eight extra weeks of progression-free survival compared to those on the standard chemotherapies.
Datroway uses an antibody that targets TROP2, a protein found on the surface of many tumor cells.
We had that question before, when we only had Enhertu and [Trodelvy].
Now we have three drugs.
Hunter said that makes it difficult to figure out where Datroway should fit into the line-up.
ADCs, meanwhile, target their drug delivery to minimize risk to healthy cells.
The most common severe side effects from ADCs tend to belymphopeniaandneutropeniaconditions characterized by having too few white blood cells.
Hunter said that cancer drugs are usually first tested in later-stage metastatic tweaks.
If they perform well, they may be moved forward to an earlier stage.
Eventually, they may become a standard therapy in early-stage cancer.
As we test ADCs in the metastatic setting, they are very promising.
ADCs are kind of the future as we see it right now, she added.
This antibody-drug conjugate delivers chemotherapy directly to cancer cells, minimizing the impact on healthy cells.
Food and Drug Administration.FDA approves datopotamab deruxtecan-dlnk for unresectable or metastatic, HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer.
National Cancer Institute Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program.Cancer stat facts: female breast cancer subtypes.
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