Roche Holding AG's cancer drug Avastin has won approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of the most common type of kidney cancer, the Swiss drugmaker said today.
The FDA is backing Avastin plus interferon alpha for people with metastatic renal cell carcinoma.
The approval is based on data from a Phase III study in patients with advanced, previously untreated metastatic renal cell carcinoma, Roche said.
The study showed that patients who were treated with Avastin plus interferon alpha lived nearly twice as long without their disease getting worse compared with those who received interferon alpha alone, Roche said.
"Avastin has now been approved for five different types of cancer in the USA," William Burns, chief executive of Roche's Pharmaceuticals Division, said in a statement.
"This underscores our belief in the important clinical benefits that Avastin delivers as we push forward with our ongoing research programs in more than 30 tumour types," he said.
Kidney cancer is the eighth most commonly diagnosed cancer in the US, according to the American Cancer Society. About13,000 Americans will die from the disease in 2009.
Avastin has been available in Europe since the end of 2007 for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced and/or metastatic renal cell cancer in combination with interferon alpha.
Reuters