Roche’s Avastin Drug Stalls Ovarian Cancer in Study (Update1)

Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Roche Holding AG said its Avastin tumor drug kept ovarian cancer at bay in a clinical trial.

Women with advanced ovarian tumors who were given Avastin combined with chemotherapy and who continued to receive the medicine lived longer without their disease progressing than patients on a placebo or those who didn’t get maintenance therapy, the Basel, Switzerland-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. No new safety issues were seen in the study.

Avastin was Roche’s top-selling drug during the fourth quarter, generating sales of 1.54 billion Swiss francs ($1.42 billion). The medicine is approved for several cancer types, including colorectal, lung and breast malignancies. Roche is seeking to expand use of the medicine, the first to choke off the blood supply to tumors, by testing it in different cancers and earlier in the disease. Roche said Feb. 23 Avastin failed to prolong the lives of stomach cancer patients.

The women in the 1,873-patient study had already undergone surgery. Ovarian cancer affects about 230,000 women each year and accounts for about 140,000 deaths, according to Roche. It is the sixth-most common cancer diagnosed in women.

Roche plans to present data from the study at an American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in June.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dermot Doherty in Geneva at ddoherty9@bloomberg.net