Drug hope for women with ovary cancer

Adding Avastin (bevacizumab) to chemotherapy can slow down progression of ovarian cancer, which kills more than 4,000 women a year in the UK.

The outlook is generally poor for those with the disease because it is mostly diagnosed in the late stages.

Fewer than 40 per cent of women with the disease are still alive after five years and Avastin is the first promising treatment in over a decade.

New data published yesterday showed adding Avastin to chemotherapy could enable women to live for 18.3 months without the disease worsening compared with 16 months for those on chemotherapy alone.

The phase III trial, led by a UK team and involving 1,528 patients, follows the success of a United States trial on Avastin, which reported earlier this year.

Those results found women with ovarian cancer had an extra four to six months of life without disease progression when taking Avastin and chemotherapy.

The latest trial involved a lower dose and a shorter course of treatment and included women with high-risk early stage as well as advanced ovarian cancer.

Manufacturer Roche will submit a licence application to the European Medicines Agency with the hope of getting Avastin approved for ovarian cancer.

Dr Tim Perren, from Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "These are exciting results showing the improved efficacy provided by bevacizumab when added to standard chemotherapy in ovarian cancer."

He added: "Bevacizumab is the first significant new drug in ovarian cancer since the introduction of paclitaxel in the mid 1990s."

Professor Max Parmar, head of the Medical Research Council clinical trials unit in London, said: "We look forward to discussing the full impact of the trial once we have published the final results in a peer-reviewed journal."

If the drug is approved by European regulators it will still need approval by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence for use on the NHS.