Targeted failure of the week. Post No 31. Avastin again!

From here.

Adding the targeted anti-vascular endothelial growth factor drug bevacizumab (Avastin) to endocrine therapy did not extend time to disease progression among women with advanced breast cancer, researchers reported here.

 

In the German-Spanish LEA trial, the median time to progression for patients on letrozole (Femara) or fulvestrant (Faslodex) was 13.8 months compared with 18.4 months for patients getting the endocrine therapy plus bevacizumab (P=0.14), reported Miguel Martin, MD, of the Hospital Universitario Gregorio Marañón in Madrid.

 

The failure to achieve the primary end point – a 31% decrease in the risk of the disease progressing – may have been due to patients in both arms doing better than expected with their assigned therapies, Martin said in his oral presentation at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

 

The difference of 4.6 months translated to a 17% reduction in the risk of time to progression, said Martin, chairman of GEICAM (Spanish Group for Breast Cancer Research), which conducted the investigator-initiated trial. Researchers had anticipated a median time to progression of 9 months in the monotherapy arm and aimed at a 13-month time to progression in the combination arm.

In addition, Martin said, "Adding bevacizumab to endocrine therapy had no impact on overall survival." Median overall survival among the 189 women assigned to receive endocrine therapy alone was 42 months; median overall survival among the 191 women who were assigned to bevacizumab plus endocrine therapy was 41 months (P=0.469). Over a period of 4 years, there were 42 deaths in each group.

 

It was expected for some of us, right?