Roche Pharmaceuticals has reported that their clinical trial of Avastin in men with advanced prostate cancer did not improve their overall life expectancy.

Avastin is currently used to treat many other cancers including; colon, breast, lung and kidney cancers. So, it had been hoped that it could easily be effective and easily approved for men with advanced prostate cancer.

A clinical trial was structured to use Avastin along with the standard of care chemotherapy drug, Taxotere. Sadly, Avastin did not reach the trial end point, extending life, but to make matters worse, the drug caused some additional significant side effects in the experimental group.

Consistent with the uneven findings for different cancers, Roche reported in a prior study that Avastin did extend the lives of women with ovarian cancer, but failed to extend life in people battling gastric cancers.

Avastin is designed to cut off the supply of blood to the tumors, thus starving them to death.

We will not see Avastin in the prostate cancer arsenal.

Joel T Nowak, MA, MSW