New treatment for advanced lung cancer looks promising

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

A clinical trial suggests that bevacizumab added to standard chemotherapy improves survival in patients with advanced lung cancer.
Bevacizumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets a growth factor involved in development of the blood supply to a tumor. It represents a new approach to cancer treatment. A team at the US National Cancer Institute now reveals that bevacizumab can improve survival in patients with non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer.

A group of 878 patients with advanced disease were given either standard chemotherapy plus bevacizumab or chemotherapy without the antibody. Those in the first group survived for 12.5 months, on average, compared to10.2 months in the second. This is considered to be a statistically significant difference. The main adverse effect of bevacizumab was bleeding, which could be life-threatening, from the lungs. However, this was infrequent.

Source
National Cancer Institute 14th March 2005