Cancer drug extends ovarian survival rate
Results released in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology indicate that taking bevacizumab (Avastin), with standard chemotherapy, can offer women an extra four to six months of life without their disease getting worse.
The drug is the first promising treatment for ovarian cancer - considered a silent killer as it is difficult to diagnose and treat - in almost 20 years.
Ovarian cancer is the fifth-most common cancer in women. Survival rates are above 70 per cent if caught early, but only about one in three is diagnosed in the early stages.
"We do need new treatments for ovarian cancer and this study demonstrates for the first time that a drug that inhibits the new blood vessels that supply a cancer, when added to chemotherapy, prolongs the time between starting treatment and when the cancer progresses," said Ian Olver, chief executive officer of Cancer Council Australia.
While the results were encouraging, it was too early to recommend the drug's widespread use in ovarian cancer treatment, said Professor Olver, who attended the presentation of the findings at a conference yesterday.
He said the drug has uncommon, but serious, side-effects such as bleeding from the bowel or perforation of it.
"The other main issue is that adding bevacizumab will add tens of thousands of dollars to the treatment, which may be difficult to justify if there's only a progression-free survival advantage of four months - without survival advantage," Professor Olver said.
The trial of nearly 1900 women with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer was funded by the US National Cancer Institute.
Those who took bevacizumab, and underwent chemotherapy for 15 months, had a 35 per cent higher chance of living longer, without the cancer progressing, than those who did not.
Source: The Australian, June 8 2010.
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