TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- Genentech Inc., the South San Francisco biotech major, said that in a Phase III study, Avastin -- combined with taxane, anthracycline-based or capecitabine chemotherapies for first-linetreatment of metastatic HER2-negative breast cancer -- "met its primary endpoint of increasing the time patients lived without their disease advancing, compared with the chemotherapies alone." The safety profile of Avastin, generically bevacizumab, "was consistent with previous experience and no new safety signals were observed," Genentech said. The trial was composed of two study groups that evaluated Avastin with different types of chemotherapies in patients who had not previously received chemotherapy for their advanced HER2-negative breast cancer, Genentech said. In February 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared Avastin to treat advanced breast cancer under a program that provisionally approves medicines for cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Genentech is majority owned by Swiss drugmaker Roche , which also recently offered to buy the shares of Genentech it doesn't already own.

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