HER2 and Herceptin

HER2 is a gene that sends control signals to your cells, telling them to grow, divide, and make repairs. A healthy breast cell has 2 copies of the HER2 gene. Some kinds of breast cancer get started when a breast cell has more than 2 copies of that gene, and those copies start over-producing the HER2 protein. As a result, the affected cells grow and divide much too quickly. Herceptin is a drug that is used to treat breast cancer that is HER2-positive. Read more about how Herceptin is used as chemotherapy.

Image of the HER2 Molecule is courtesy of RCSB Protein Data Bank.
PDB ID: 1N8Z, Cho, H.-S., Mason, K., Ramyar, K.X., Stanley, A.M., Gabelli, S.B., Denney Jr., D.W., Leahy, D.J., Structure of the Extracellular Region of HER2 Alone and in Complex with the Herceptin Fab, Nature v421 pp.756-760 , 2003