Roche drug shows longest overall survival for patients with advanced lung cancer

BASEL, Switzerland — Roche announced updated results from a late-stage study demonstrating that first-line use of bevacizumab provided the longest median overall survival duration shown in a Phase III trial of patients with advanced non-small cell adenocarcinoma of the lung.

The data showed that bevacizumab in combination with chemotherapy led to a 3.9-month improvement in overall survival compared to chemotherapy alone.

The analysis of the E4599 study, primary results of which were reported in 2006, included 878 patients with newly diagnosed recurrent or advanced non-small-cell lung cancer.

Patients were randomized to receive either bevacizumab in combination with chemotherapy, or chemotherapy alone.

Results indicated that among patients who received bevacizumab plus chemotherapy, median survival was 14.2 months, compared to 10.3 months in those who received chemotherapy alone.

In addition, data showed that 57 percent of patients with adenocarcinoma who received bevacizumab were alive after one year, with 27 percent surviving for two years or more. This compared with 43 percent and 17 percent, respectively, of patients who received chemotherapy alone.

The safety profile in the present analysis was consistent across types of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), confirming bevacizumab’s well established and manageable safety profile.

E4599 is a US-based international Phase III trial conducted by the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG).

Patients were randomly assigned to receive treatment with bevacizumab, paclitaxel and carboplatin or treatment with paclitaxel-carboplatin alone. The primary end point of the study was overall survival.

With the initial approval in the US for advanced colorectal cancer in 2004, bevacizumab became the first anti-angiogenic therapy made widely available for the treatment of patients with an advanced cancer.

Today, bevacizumab is continuing to transform cancer care through its proven survival benefit (overall survival and/or progression free survival) across several types of cancer. 

The medicine is approved in the US and Europe for the treatment of advanced stages of colorectal cancer, breast cancer, non-small cell lung cancer and kidney cancer, and it is also available in the US and 24 other countries for the treatment of patients with advanced brain cancer.

The medicine is the only anti-angiogenic therapy available for the treatment of these numerous advanced cancer types, which collectively cause over 2.5 million deaths each year.