A paper, published in Acta Ontologica, represents the culmination of a series of translational research outputs stemming from an 88 patient clinical trial involving eight different hospitals beginning in 2010. Led by Prof John Crown, the TCHL trial focused on the novel combination of two anti-cancer drugs used to treat the fast growing HER-2 positive breast cancer subtype.

Over the last fifteen years, the investigator-led trial has yielded a series of publications, which stemmed from the collection of bio-samples taken from patients before they started their treatment, but uniquely also as their treatment was ongoing. These bio-samples were accessed and analysed by researchers. In contrast the samples from industry-led trials, which are far more common, are not generally available

The project focused on the lab based observation that Trastuzumab, a monolocal antibody used to treat HER2, could work in tandem with another anti-HER2 drug: Lapatinib. The study set out to convert this lab based observation into a viable treatment option for patients in a stand out example of translational research. 

Prof John Crown has been the Thomas Baldwin Chair of Translational Research in DCU since 2001 having been appointed. Over time the university has built a unit committed to a translational research approach grounded in observing scientific data and feeding this into clinical treatment in designing trial designs.

The wider team behind the trial and subsequent data analysis included current and former DCU researchers Dr Alex Eustace, Dr Denis Collins, Dr Neil Conlon, DrNaomi Walsh, Prof Martin Clynes, Dr Norma Donovan, and Dr Alexandre Cannacci.

When given to patients with early but high risk cancer, the new combination of the drugs produced better long term response to treatment. While the new combination of drugs did not deliver an increase in pathological complete response, where drugs kill off the disease ahead of surgery the addition of Lapatinib to trastuzumab was linked to a lower chance of a patient's cancer returning.

The trial, conducted between 2010 and 2012 with follow up until 2018, was also one of the first in the world to offer this combination of drugs to patients. It also represented an instance of administering drugs to patients before resorting to surgery, a reverse of the then more common approach.

This study was partly funded by the Caroline Foundation, a charity named after Caroline Dwyer Hickey who died of breast cancer aged 35 in 2013. Caroline was a patient of Prof Crown’s from the time of her being diagnosed with breast cancer in June 2004.