Roche says bevacizumab (Avastin) helps in advanced ovarian cancer

ZURICH (Reuters) - Roche's biotech unit Genentech said results from a late-stage trial of Avastin (bevacizumab) showed the drug helped women with ovarian cancer live longer, an encouraging sign for Avastin after recent setbacks.

The results were presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the world's biggest oncology congress. The five-day conference, being held in Chicago, runs until Tuesday.

The results from a Phase III study showed that women with previously untreated advanced ovarian cancer who received the drug in combination with chemotherapy and then Avastin alone for maintenance therapy had a 39% improvement in the likelihood of living longer without the disease worsening compared to chemotherapy alone.

Women who continued on Avastin lived for an average of 14.1 months without disease progression, compared with 10.3 months for women on chemo alone.

Patients who did not stay on Avastin did not do significantly better in the trial -- which enrolled 1,837 patients -- than those treated only with chemotherapy.

Avastin, which starves tumors of blood supply, is already a key weapon in the fight against colon, lung, breast and other cancers, but it has stumbled at key hurdles this year, failing in late-stage stomach and prostate cancer studies.

And last week Roche stopped enrolling patients into a late stage trial for Avastin and MabThera plus chemotherapy in non-aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

The drug is the first targeted therapy to show a benefit in ovarian cancer.

"We do need to learn more about what is the effect of using this agent on overall survival," said Dr. Robert Burger, director of the women's cancer center at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

Women treated with Avastin had higher rates of side effects, including high blood pressure and gastrointestinal problems, than patients getting chemotherapy alone.

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