Avastin slows down spread of brain tumour

22 November, 2007

Pharmaceutical company Genentech, based in San Francisco, the United States, has said its drug Avastin slows down the spread of brain tumors.

According to Genentech, the largest maker of cancer drugs in the US, the results of new study offers “a potential option against a disease that has resisted therapy for 25 years.”

Tumors of about 36% of patients, suffering from relapsed brain cancer and taking Avastin, remained stable for six months, says the research presented at a meeting of the Society for Neuro-Oncology at Dallas, the United States. About 15% of patients had done well on other drugs in previous studies, researchers said.

The drug Avastin, approved for cancers of the colon and the lungs, is Genentech’s second-biggest seller, notching sales worth $1.75 billion in 2006.

The drug, which cuts off blood supply to tumors, is being tested in 300 clinical trials worldwide against 20 different types of cancer, according to Genentech. Cutting of blood supply is expected to reduce the tumor's ability to grow and spread in the body.

In the United States, about 20,500 new cases of brain cancer are diagnosed each year and 12,740 patients will die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society. The 5-year survival rate for patients with glioblastoma, a fierce form of brain cancer, is only 3 %.

If approved for treatment of brain tumors, Avastin could help 12,740 patients who are expected to die of the disease this year in the United States, the American Cancer Society has estimated.

The promising results of the study on Avastin come from the second of three phases of study normally required for approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

In the study, researchers enlisted 167 patients with a relapsed form of glioblastoma. These patients took Avastin or a combination of Avastin and irinotecan, a chemotherapy agent.

Patients fared better on the combination – with 51% of them alive with stable tumors after six months, the company claimed.

Side effects in the trial were consistent with other studies of Avastin. About 8% of patients put on Avastin showed significantly higher levels of blood pressure, and 6% had convulsions.

Avastin was first approved in February 2004 as a first-line treatment for metastatic colorectal cancer in combination with intravenous 5-FU-based chemotherapy. In October 2006, it was approved as the first-line treatment of patients with unresectable, locally advanced, recurrent or metastatic nonn-squamous, non-small cell lung cancer.

Timothy Cloughesy, director of the Neuro-Oncology program, of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, said: “The findings suggested that at 6 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.”

Genentech said the company plans to discuss the results of the study with the US Food and Drug Administration to decide the steps to be taken next.Glioblastoma is a form of cancer that is very difficult to treat. Patients newly diagnosed with glioblastoma usually are given chemotherapy. Once they relapse, they are expected to live about 3 to 6 months, according to research published previously.

The 5-year survival rate for glioblastoma – that is, 3% – has not changed for 25 years, according to the American Cancer Society.