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22. HER-2/NEU Protein as Target

HER-2/NEU Protein as Target

 

Herceptin is a good example of a pharmacogenomics success story. In the 1980s, researchers discovered that some women who had particularly fast-growing breast cancers expressed extra copies of a gene called Her-2/neu. The genes were producing many copies of a protein that appeared to be driving the growth of the cancer cells.