The survival rate for patients with recurrent glioblastoma is increased after Avastin is being administered alone or as the part of a combination therapy according to a recent study that was conduced at 11 centers across the country and published in the early online version of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. It was also revealed during the study that the targeted therapy of Avastin can significantly increase progression-free survival times and survival rates in patients with a deadly form of recurrent brain cancer.

Dr. Timothy Cloughesy, director of the Neuro-Oncology Program at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and senior author of the study remarked that positive results of Avastin has rightly promoted the FDA to to an accelerated approval of Avastin in May 2009 for use in patients with recurrent glioblastomas.

From News-Medical.Net:

Cloughesy believes the study shows the apparent power of Avastin when used alone in treating deadly brain cancers for which few effective treatments now exist.

“I think what this tells us is that the majority of the effects we’re seeing are due to the Avastin,” he said.

In addition, Avastin was well tolerated. While some serious side effects were noted - brain hemorrhage, strokes and heart attacks - they were seen in a very small number of patients. Avastin also appeared to reduce brain swelling, allowing patients to significantly lower the steroid dose they had to take, eliminating a number of debilitating side effects.

“Because their brain swelling went down and they could lower their doses of steroids, some patients saw a marked improvement in function,” Cloughesy said.

About 20,000 patients will be diagnosed with glioblastoma this year, of those 14,000 will die.

The last new systemic therapy for recurrent glioblastoma was approved in 1976. Until Avastin, all other experimental therapies tested in this type of cancer failed to meet the FDA guidelines for approval. It’s vital that less toxic, more effective therapies are found to fight glioblastoma, Cloughesy said, both when it recurs and when it is first diagnosed. Studies are underway now to see if the study results can be validated in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastomas.

It is worth noting here that Avastin is an angiogenesis inhibitor capable of neutralizing VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor), which is a chemical signal for stimulating the growth of new blood vessels. It has already been approved for use in treating ailments such as metastatic colorectal, breast, and kidney cancers as well as non-small cell lung cancer.