Hope for Advanced Lung Cancer

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A new drug that literally chokes off the blood supply cancerous tumors need to thrive is holding out hope for people with advanced lung cancer.

In a new study, Avastin (bevacizumab) led to better survival rates and longer times to the progression of the disease in people who received it along with standard chemotherapy drugs.

The drug works by targeting a protein needed to develop the many small blood vessels that normally bring nutrients and oxygen into the tumors. With those tiny blood vessels out of the way, the remaining blood vessels are healthier, which allows more of the standard chemotherapy drugs into the tumor.

In this study, which involved 878 patients with advanced or recurring lung cancer who were randomly assigned to receive chemotherapy alone or chemotherapy with Avastin, median survival was about one year for patients receiving Avastin vs. about 10 months for patients receiving chemotherapy alone. Avastin patients survived without a progression of their cancer a median of about six months, compared to about four months for those who only received chemotherapy.

"Twenty years ago, we thought no treatment could help patients with advanced lung cancer," reports study author Joan Schiller, M.D., from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "Ten years ago, we found that chemotherapy could improve survival of these patients. Now, we are finding out that this very unique drug called Avastin can also help improve survival even more."

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SOURCE: The New England Journal of Medicine, 2006;355:2542-2550