Herceptin and breast cancer

I’m sure everybody’s seen the news that Herceptin when used with chemotherapy has been shown to be effective enough in preventing recurrence of breast cancer that they halted the study early. Might as  well get on with it.

But what caught my attention was the following remark:

The apparent success of Herceptin validates the strategy of cancer
researchers to study the cancer cells themselves first, identify their
vulnerabilities and then design therapies that target those vulnerabilities.

"This is really a case where we’ve now closed the loop on that,"
demonstrating that drugs developed by this strategy are indeed effective, Geyer
said.

Scientists and drug companies have made a huge investment in "targeted therapies" and "rational drug design" to come up with treatments that are better than the traditional carpet-bombing of cancer cells in traditional chemo. But results of this approach that you could sink your teeth into, so to speak, have been skimpy. So they’re  thinking, "Yesss! Vindication…"