Genentech's Avastin Slows Down Brain Cancer - Study

Genentech's Avastin medication has been shown in a study to slow down the spread of brain tumors, the company announced Monday at a meeting of the Society for Neuro-Oncology in Dallas. Brain tumors are notoriously resistant to treatment. The study involved 167 patients with relapsed glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer with a life expectancy of three to six months and a 3% five-year survival rate. The tumors of 36% of subjects who took Avastin were stable for six months, well beyond the 15% result of patients on other medications in previous studies. Patients who took a combination of Avastin and the chemotherapy agent irinotecan did even better, with 51% showing stable tumors. "These findings exceeded our expectations," said Hal Barron, Genentech's SVP of development. Timothy Cloughesy, director of the Neuro-Oncology program at the University of California, concurred: "The findings suggested that at six months, more patients had lived without their cancer advancing when Avastin was administered as a single agent or in combination with chemotherapy than what we would normally expect." Avastin works by cutting off the tumors' blood supply. The drug, which brought in sales of $1.75 billion in 2006, is currently approved for use in lung and colon cancer and is being tested against 20 other kinds of cancer.

Sources: Press release, Bloomberg
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