Research involving laboratory animals at UCLA leads to many medical breakthroughs that improve people's lives and hold promise for additional improvements in diagnoses, treatments and cures.
UCLA studies utilizing mice were the basis for human clinical trials in patients with metastatic breast cancer. This led to the breakthrough breast cancer medication Herceptin, the first cancer-fighting drug to successfully target a specific genetic alteration, thereby limiting side effects such as hair loss and nausea that often accompany conventional therapies.