Australian women suffering from advanced HER2-positive breast cancer are now able to have affordable access to two additional treatment options.

Two anti-cancer therapies – Perjeta and Kadcyla – are now available to women through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and assist in fighting the aggressive sub-type of the disease.

Director of the Patricia Ritchie Centre for Cancer Care and Research at the Mater Hospital, Professor Fran Boyle, says this announcement has brought a great sense of relief around the country in the 20 per cent of breast cancer sufferers who have the HER2-positive strain.

‘These two drugs offer women with this kind of secondary breast cancer a new opportunity to improve their survival and the time that the disease can be controlled,’ Prof. Boyle told Daily Mail Australia.

‘These women are doing normal activities with their families and working and trying to stay alive, so this takes the financial burden off them which was adding to increased stress.’

For the past two years women who accessed these therapies were either paying for them or receiving them as part of a clinical trial or compassionate access program.

For more details, go to: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3144026/HER2-positive-breast-cancer-sufferers-breathe-sigh-relief-TWO-new-treatments-available-PBS.html