Word: avastin
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...Researchers have wrung other kinds of information out of cancer cells, including the way they spur the formation of blood vessels, which nourish their growth. Avastin, approved in 2004, is the first drug to throw a wrench into the process by suppressing a tumor's ability to recruit vascular growth factors. As with many of the newer therapies, doctors have found that it works best as part of a cocktail of cancer drugs...
...Philip Rosenfeld, a macular-degeneration specialist in Miami, offered an offbeat solution: he proposed administering a drug with a similar molecular structure,?also made by Genentech, which was already approved by the FDA - for treating colorectal cancer. Since then an estimated 10,000 people worldwide have given the drug, Avastin, a shot - literally - by taking an injection of it in the eye. And most of them have had very good results with the Lucentis cousin...
...only problem? Lucentis will likely cost more than 100 times as much as the temporary fix.??A dose of Avastin for the eye costs as little as $13, says Rosenfeld, who is also a lead author on Lucentis trial reports. (Using FDA-approved drugs for "off-label" uses is??common practice, especially in ophthalmology.) Lucentis is almost certain to be pricier when Genentech announces the U.S. sales tag: competing treatments cost up to $3000 per dose...
...When Lucentis is approved, it is doubtful Americans will continue to use Avastin for AMD - even though the cheaper drug has worked so well that some 30 states now cover it for macular-degeneration treatment, says Rosenfeld. Doctors predict patients will go for the drug that has the FDA imprimatur, as long as insurance companies pick up the higher cost. Doctors too will most likely turn to the more expensive drug. "Let's just say there's a bad outcome," says Dr. John Sorenson, an AMD expert in New York City. "You can already hear the lawyers say, 'Doctor...
...drugs that target cancer cells more precisely and with less toxicity had been approved by the FDA. (Two more have since been approved.) Jacobs' doctors at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston enrolled her in a clinical trial for a combination of two of those agents, Tarceva and Avastin, last August. "The difference is like night and day," says Jacobs. "I take a pill every day, and every three weeks I go in for an infusion, which takes about 30 minutes." After nearly a year on the experimental cocktail, she has seen her primary lung cancer shrink more than...