About the Authors

Neil L. Spector

Contributed equally to this work with: Neil L. Spector, Faith C. Robertson

Neil.Spector@duke.edu

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Duke Cancer Center, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America

Faith C. Robertson

Contributed equally to this work with: Neil L. Spector, Faith C. Robertson

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Duke Cancer Center, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America

Sarah Bacus

Affiliation Targeted Molecular Diagnostics/Quintiles, Westmont, Illinois, United States of America

Kimberly Blackwell

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Duke Cancer Center, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America

Deborah A. Smith

Current address: PAREXEL International, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America

Affiliation GlaxoSmithKline, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, United States of America

Kelli Glenn

Affiliation GlaxoSmithKline, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, United States of America

Leanne Cartee

Affiliation GlaxoSmithKline, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, United States of America

Jennifer Harris

Affiliation Pivot Oncology Consulting, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America

Carie L. Kimbrough

Affiliation PAREXEL International, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America

Mark Gittelman

Affiliation Breast Cancer Specialists, Allentown, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Eli Avisar

Affiliation Department of Surgery, University of Miami School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, United States of America

Peter Beitsch

Affiliation Dallas Surgical Group, Dallas, Texas, United States of America

Kevin M. Koch

Affiliation GlaxoSmithKline, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have the following interests: Funding for this study was provided by GSK. Editorial support in the form of development of the first draft, editorial suggestions to draft revisions, assembling tables/figures, collating author comments and referencing was provided by Guissou Dabiri, PhD, and was funded by GSK. Sarah Bacus is employed by Quintiles, Deborah A Smith, Kelli Glenn, Leanne Cartee and Kevin M Koch by GlaxoSmithKline, Jennifer Harris by Pivot Oncology Consulting and Peter Beitsch by Dallas Surgical Group. GlaxoSmithKline markets the drug lapatinib under the propriety names Tykerb (mostly US) and Tyverb (mostly Europe). There are no further patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: NLS KMK DAS JH. Performed the experiments: KG NLS KMK JH KB PB EA MG SB. Analyzed the data: NLS FCR KMK DAS LC SB CLK. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: KG SB. Wrote the paper: NLS FCR KMK DAS LC CLK.