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Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. About 1 In 5 women with breast cancer, the cancer cells have  excessively of a development advancing protein known as HER2/neu (or only HER2) on their surface. The cancer is known as HER2-positive breast cancers and they tend to grow and spread aggressively.
A number of drugs have been developed that target this protein. One of the drugs is a monoclonal antibody, Trastuzumab. It was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in September, 1998 for patients with invasive breast cancers that overexpress HER2 and sold under the the brand name Herceptin.
Trastuzumab is used to treat both early- and late-stage breast cancer. When used before or after surgery to treat early breast cancer, this drug is usually given for a total of a year. For advanced breast cancer, treatment is often given for as long as the drug is helpful. This drug is given by slow injection into a vein (IV).

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Trastuzumab (or Herceptin) was developed by Genentech Inc (San Francisco, CA, USA) as a recombinant humanized monoclonal antibody directed against the extracellular domain IV of HER2 (Carter et al., 1992)

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Trastuzumab binds to the extracellular juxtamembrane domain of HER2 to inhibit the proliferation and survival of HER2-dependent tumours.
Trastuzumab is known to disrupt ligand-independent HER2/HER3 interactions in HER2-amplified cells. This dissociation leads to the uncoupling of PI3K-AKT signaling and correlates with the antiproliferative effects of trastuzumab. (Junttila et al., 2010)

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Original video by Roche/Genentech: https://vimeo.com/12434125. Herceptin (trastuzumab) is a humanized IgG1 kappa monoclonal antibody that selectively binds with high affinity to the extracellular domain of the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 protein (HER2). The HER2 (or c-erbB2) proto-oncogene encodes a transmembrane receptor protein of 185 kDa, which is structurally related to the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR).

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HER-2 amplification was known to have adverse prognostic significance, so as a targeted therapy against this high-risk subgroup, Herceptin has become an important therapy option in both the adjuvant and metastatic settings. Working in this molecularly defined subset of breast cancer patients, Herceptin has been instrumental in creating an awareness of personalized medicine within the wider community and has come to define personalised medicine for many people.(Bates, 2010)

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Cancer.org. (2018). Targeted Therapy for Breast Cancer. [online] Available at: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/breast-cancer/treatment/targeted-therapy-for-breast-cancer.html [Accessed 12 Feb. 2018].

Carter, P., Presta, L., Gorman, C. M., Ridgway, J. B., Henner, D., Wong, W. L., Rowland, A. M., Kotts, C., Carver, M. E., and Shepard, H. M. (1992). Humanization of an anti-p185HER2 antibody for human cancer therapy. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 89, 4285–4289.

Junttila, T., Li, G., Parsons, K., Phillips, G. and Sliwkowski, M. (2010). Trastuzumab-DM1 (T-DM1) retains all the mechanisms of action of trastuzumab and efficiently inhibits growth of lapatinib insensitive breast cancer. Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, 128(2), pp.347-356.

Bates, S. (2010). Progress towards personalized medicine. Drug Discovery Today, 15(3-4), pp.115-120.