UK rejects Roche's Avastin as US verdict looms

Britain's healthcare cost agency Nice has rejected Roche's Avastin as a treatment for advanced breast cancer and given a poor assessment of the drug ahead of a decision soon on its status in the key US market. The rebuff from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) is no great surprise, since Avastin has already been rejected for bowel cancer. But the negative comments will highlight uncertainty about its use elsewhere.

"Unfortunately, we did not receive any evidence from the manufacturer to show that bevacizumab (Avastin) can significantly lengthen a patient's life or, importantly, offer a better quality of life than existing treatments," Nice Chief Executive Andrew Dillon said. Although clinical data seemed to show Avastin might slow the growth and spread of cancer, Nice said on Wednesday the size of this effect varied between studies and it was "extremely unclear" that the benefits translated into longer life. Roche said it was disappointed Nice had rejected Avastin, despite evidence from a new meta-analysis showing some women with difficult-to-treat breast cancers could derive substantial benefit from adding Avastin to their chemotherapy. Nice said the new evidence was not robust for these patients, who had previously received taxane chemotherapy or had so-called "triple negative" disease.