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Lung cancer patients given Genentech Inc.'s targeted drug Avastin along with standard chemotherapy lived longer, the U.S. National Cancer Institute said on Monday, sending the company's shares up 25 percent and raising hopes for treatment of an almost always fatal cancer.
Patients who got Avastin along with the standard chemo drugs paclitaxel and carboplatin lived a median of 12.5 months compared to 10.2 months for patients given standard chemotherapy alone, said the NCI, which sponsored the study.
The results were published early because they were so important for a cancer that has a dismal cure rate, the NCI said. Additional details of the trial will be released at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Orlando, Florida, in May.
The news prompted a buying frenzy in Genentech shares, during which about $11.5 billion was added to the company's market value during the final hour of trading.
The stock closed up 24.77 percent, or $10.92, at $55 on the New York Stock Exchange. It carried along share prices in general and biotechnology stocks in particular, boosting the American Stock Exchange Biotechnology index by nearly 5 percent.
The gains bled over into shares of Biogen Idec and Imclone Systems, which closed 3.6 percent on Monday. Shares of Protein Design Labs, which earns royalties on sales of several antibody-based drugs, including Avastin, rose 14 percent to close at $16.41 on Nasdaq.
'EXCITING RESULTS'
"The exciting results of this randomized study reveal, for the first time, an improvement in survival with the addition of a targeted agent to standard chemotherapy in this patient population," said Dr. Alan Sandler, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, who led the study.
Avastin, known generically as bevacizumab, is a monoclonal antibody -- a laboratory-made immune system protein designed to interfere with vascular endothelial growth factor. Tumors use VEGF to build blood vessels to feed themselves.
This class of drug may hold promise for treatment of a number of different kinds of cancer, experts said. "In combination with standard therapies, they (monoclonals) can be used for a variety of cancers, leading to increased patient survival," said NCI Director Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach.
Dr. Hal Barron, Genentech's senior vice president, said the company would seek U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to market Avastin for lung cancer.
The company also said it would test Avastin against advanced kidney, breast and ovarian cancers, and as an early therapy against a range of tumors and blood cancers.
For the study, 878 patients with advanced non-squamous, non-small cell lung cancer who had not been given any chemotherapy were given either standard treatment -- six cycles of paclitaxel and carboplatin -- or got Avastin as well.
Patients who got Avastin were slightly more likely to suffer life-threatening or fatal bleeding, mostly from the lungs, the NCI said.
"This was a subpopulation of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer so it doesn't apply to all patients with non-small-cell lung cancer," cautioned the NCI's Dr. Scott Saxman, who oversees clinical trials. Patients with squamous cell cancers tended to bleed when given Avastin in earlier trials, and no one knows why, he said.
BIGGEST CANCER KILLER
Lung cancer is by far the biggest cancer killer in the United States and much of the world, affecting an estimated 172,570 people in the United States alone and killing more than 163,000. The World Health Organization says more than 1.2 million people get lung cancer each year and 1.1 million die.
Avastin is also approved for colon cancer.
"This puts fuel behind Avastin," said Sena Lund, an analyst at Cathay Financial LLC.
He projected peak Avastin sales of $500 million to $700 million sales in lung cancer alone. The drug, launched just over a year ago, had sales of $554.5 million in 2004.
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