British scientists have made a significant breakthrough in the treatment of ovarian cancer by discovering a way to reverse the resistance to drugs that denies thousands of women patients each year a chance of survival.

Ovarian Cancer is a common disease and one of the hardest to treat. Around 70 per cent of patients cannot be cured because they develop resistance to the chemotherapy which targets the malignant cells.

Professor Hani Gabra and his team at the Hammersmith Hospital in west London have discovered four major gene pathways that could reverse the resistance. This opens up the prospect of developing a drug to block these pathways and allow the chemotherapy to carry on working. The drugs in question, cisplatin and carboplatin - also known as platinum chemotherapy - are given as injections after surgery.

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In September of 1998, the FDA approved Herceptin to treat breast cancer after it had become metastatic. Few days back,  the FDA approved Herceptin’s use for women diagnosed with breast cancer just after surgery. The drug is already widely prescribed for adjuvant therapy even without the FDA’s approval, a practice called off-label use. Off-label use means that a prescription drug is being prescribed for a purpose not listed on the product’s label. This is a common and acceptable practice by doctors and the Food and Drug Administration.Clinical trials were conducted that showed women who received Herceptin (trastuzumab) given along with chemotherapy had fewer relapses than those who only received chemotherapy. Twenty to thirty percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have this genetic alteration of the HER2 gene and could benefit by being treated with Herceptin.