Study Confirms That Avastin Significantly Increases Chance of Living Without Disease Progression in Metastatic Bre...( - Data From Pivotal Phase III AVADO ...),Health

- Data From Pivotal Phase III AVADO Study Presented at ASCO for the First

Time

BASEL, Switzerland, May 31 /PRNewswire/ -- Avastin (bevacizumab), significantly improves the time patients with metastatic breast cancer live without their disease getting worse ("progression-free survival") when combined with a commonly used chemotherapy called docetaxel (Taxotere), compared with docetaxel alone. These findings were presented for the first time today at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago. This is the second large phase III trial that met its primary endpoint by showing that Avastin provides a significant improvement in progression-free survival in HER 2 negative metastatic breast cancer patients. This follows the recently published landmark E2100 study (Avastin plus paclitaxel versus paclitaxel alone).

The results of the phase III "Avastin and Docetaxel" ("AVADO", BO17708) study showed that the combination of Avastin and docetaxel resulted in:

-- Up to a 64% increase in a patient's chance of being alive without

disease progression compared to docetaxel alone.

-- Up to two thirds of patients (63%) experiencing major shrinkage of

their tumor, which is unprecedented.

-- No new safety signals related to Avastin. Furthermore, Avastin did not

have a major impact on the known toxicity profile of docetaxel.

Principal investigator for AVADO, Dr. David Miles, medical oncologist, Mount Vernon Hospital, UK said: "This is the second large phase III study to confirm that Avastin extends the time in which patients live without disease progression in combination with a widely used chemotherapy agent. Importantly this study has confirmed that Avastin can be used with taxane-based chemotherapy to provide a meaningful benefit for patients with metastatic breast cancer."

Two doses of Avastin were investigated in the study (7.5 and 15 m
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