It is well known that chemotherapy and other treatments can cause a series of annoying side effects such as hair loss, vomiting and bone marrow suppression. The reason for this is that chemotherapy drugs kill all eight sides, whether they are tumor tissues or healthy tissues, it is hard to escape their attack range. If chemotherapy is compared to carpet bombing, then targeted therapy is a precision-guided long-range missile! The so-called targeted therapy is to target the site where tumor occurs and use drugs that can bind specifically to that site to attack tumor cells accurately and directionally. Compared with traditional treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy, it has the feature of “precision-guided”, which can distinguish between “enemy and me”, efficiently and selectively kill tumor cells and reduce the damage to normal tissues. Therefore, it is less toxic and does not cause serious reactions such as hair loss, anemia, nausea and vomiting, which are caused by traditional chemotherapy drugs. However, targeted therapy is not suitable for all breast cancer patients; it is mainly targeted for HER2-positive breast cancer patients. Only 2-3 out of every 10 breast cancer patients are HER2 positive, and this group of patients has more aggressive tumor and more active tumor proliferation compared to other patients, and thus poorer prognosis. If targeted treatment plans are not taken, recurrence and metastasis are highly likely to occur. So how to determine if you are a HER2-positive breast cancer patient? In HER2 test report, if the result of IHC (Immunohistochemistry) is 3 plus, it means that the patient is HER2 positive; if it is 1 plus or 0, it means that HER2 is negative; if it is 2 plus, further FISH (Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization) test is needed, if the result is positive (gene amplification), the patient can be diagnosed as HER2 positive; if the result is negative (no gene amplification), the patient can be diagnosed as HER2 positive. If the result is negative (no gene amplification), the diagnosis is HER2 negative. Several large international studies have demonstrated that targeted therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer patients significantly reduces the risk of recurrence and metastasis and prolongs survival time. The current targeted drugs for HER2 in clinical practice are trastuzumab, lapatinib and patuximab. However, targeted therapies are expensive and often not covered by health insurance. Let’s focus on targeted therapies and look forward to the tilt of health insurance policy towards this highly effective and low toxicity treatment option!