News from this week ...
Avastin: A metastatic colorectal cancer treatment and advanced non-small cell lung cancer treatment.
In a past clinical trial sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, researchers gave breast cancer patients either Avastin and the breast cancer drug paclitaxel (also marketed as Taxol) or just paclitaxel alone.
The results showed that the drug combination of Avastin and Taxol almost doubled the time before breast tumors worsened, from just less than six months with paclitaxel alone to 11.3 months with the combination. Preliminary results of the study were released in April 2005, before the end of the study. Source: Here.
In combination with another drug, Avastin posed problems as well. Researchers in February 2006 abruptly halted recruitment of patients for a study combining the anti-cancer drugs Avastin and Xelox after several patients involved in the clinical testing died. Xeloda, a medication used alone since 1998 as a first-line defense in the treatment of colon cancer.
