SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA I July 22, 2014 I Genentech, a member of the Roche Group (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY), today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted the company’s supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) and granted Priority Review for Avastin® (bevacizumab) plus chemotherapy for the treatment of women with recurrent platinum-resistant ovarian cancer.

“The majority of women with ovarian cancer will become resistant to platinum therapy and a quarter of women will have platinum-resistant disease at the time of a first recurrence. New treatment options are needed,” said Sandra Horning, M.D., chief medical officer and head of Global Product Development. “We look forward to working with the FDA to bring this potential option to women with this difficult-to-treat cancer as soon as possible.”

The designation of Priority Review status is granted to medicines that the FDA believes have the potential to provide “significant improvements in the safety or effectiveness of the treatment, diagnosis, or prevention of serious conditions when compared to standard applications.” The sBLA for Avastin plus chemotherapy for recurrent platinum-resistant ovarian cancer is based on data from the Phase III AURELIA trial with an FDA action date of November 19, 2014.

About the AURELIA Study

AURELIA is a company-sponsored, multicenter, randomized, open-label, Phase III study in 361 women with platinum-resistant recurrent epithelial ovarian, primary peritoneal or fallopian tube cancer who had received no more than two anticancer regimens prior to enrollment in the trial. Participants were randomized to one of six treatment arms (paclitaxel, topotecan or liposomal doxorubicin with or without Avastin). Study data showed:

  • The study met its primary endpoint and showed that Avastin plus chemotherapy reduced the risk of disease worsening (progression-free survival, PFS) by 52 percent compared to chemotherapy alone (median PFS: 6.7 months vs. 3.4 months; Hazard Ratio (HR)=0.48, p
  • Women in the Avastin plus paclitaxel arm (n=60) experienced a 54 percent reduction in the risk of their disease worsening (median PFS: 10.4 months vs. 3.9 months; HR=0.46, 95% CI 0.30-0.71) and a 35 percent reduction in the risk of death (median OS: 22.4 months vs. 13.2 months; HR=0.65, 95% CI 0.42-1.02).
  • The study showed women who received Avastin plus chemotherapy had a significantly higher rate of tumor shrinkage (objective response rate, ORR) compared to chemotherapy alone when evaluated by the RECIST criteria (27.3 percent vs. 11.8 percent, respectively; p=0.001).
  • Grade 3-5 adverse events occurring at a higher incidence (≥ 2 percent) in women receiving Avastin plus chemotherapy compared to women receiving chemotherapy alone were hypertension (high blood pressure; 7 percent vs. 1 percent), proteinuria (too much protein in the urine; 2 percent vs. 0 percent) and gastrointestinal perforations (a hole in the stomach or intestine; 2 percent vs. 0 percent).

About Ovarian Cancer

Ovarian cancer causes more deaths than any other gynecologic cancer. In 2014, nearly 22,000 women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer in the United States and more than 14,000 will die from the disease. Patients are said to have ‘platinum-resistant’ disease if the disease worsens within six months of completing platinum-based chemotherapy. One quarter of those who relapse after initial treatment, more than 4,300 women, will have platinum-resistant cancer, the most difficult-to-treat form of the disease.

About Avastin

Avastin is a prescription-only medicine that is a solution for intravenous infusion. It is a biologic antibody designed to specifically bind to a protein called vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) that plays an important role throughout the lifecycle of the tumor to develop and maintain blood vessels, a process known as angiogenesis. Avastin is designed to interfere with the tumor blood supply by directly binding to the VEGF protein to prevent interactions with receptors on blood vessel cells. The tumor blood supply is thought to be critical to a tumor’s ability to grow and spread in the body (metastasize).

Avastin U.S. Indications:

Avastin is approved for first- and second-line treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer in combination with intravenous 5-FU-based chemotherapy. Avastin, in combination with fluropyrimidine-irinotecan or fluoropyrimidine-oxaliplatin based chemotherapy, is indicated for the second-line treatment of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who have progressed on a first-line Avastin-containing regimen. Avastin is not indicated for adjuvant treatment of colon cancer.

Avastin is approved for first-line treatment of unresectable, locally advanced, recurrent or metastatic, non-squamous, non-small cell lung cancer in combination with carboplatin and paclitaxel, and metastatic renal cell carcinoma in combination with interferon alfa.

BOXED WARNINGS and Additional Important Safety Information

People receiving Avastin may experience side effects. In clinical trials, some people treated with Avastin experienced serious and sometimes fatal side effects, including:

Gastrointestinal (GI) perforation: Treatment with Avastin can result in the development of a serious side effect called GI perforation, which is the development of a hole in the stomach, small intestine, or large intestine. In clinical trials, this event occurred in more people who received Avastin than in the comparison group (2.4 percent to 0.3 percent). In some cases, GI perforation resulted in fatality. Avastin therapy should be permanently stopped if GI perforation occurs.

Surgery and wound healing problems: Treatment with Avastin can lead to slow or incomplete wound healing (for example, when a surgical incision has trouble healing or staying closed). In some cases, this event resulted in fatality. Surgery and wound healing problems occurred more often in people who received Avastin than in the comparison group. In a controlled clinical trial, in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who had surgery during the course of treatment, the incidence of wound healing complications, including serious and fatal complications, was 15 percent for patients who received Avastin and four percent for patients who did not receive Avastin.

Avastin therapy should not be started for at least 28 days after surgery and until the surgical wound is fully healed. The length of time between stopping Avastin and having voluntary surgery without the risk of wound healing problems following surgery has not been determined. Treatment with Avastin should be stopped at least 28 days before voluntary surgery and in people with wound healing problems following surgery that require medical treatment. Treatment with Avastin should be stopped in patients with slow or incomplete wound healing.

Severe bleeding: Treatment with Avastin can result in serious or fatal bleeding, including coughing up blood, bleeding in the stomach, vomiting of blood, bleeding in the brain, nosebleeds and vaginal bleeding. These events occurred up to five times more often in people who received Avastin compared to patients who received only chemotherapy. Across cancer types, 1.2 percent to 4.6 percent of people who received Avastin experienced severe to fatal bleeding. People who have recently coughed up blood (greater than or equal to a half teaspoon of red blood) or have serious bleeding should not receive Avastin. Treatment with Avastin should be permanently stopped if serious bleeding occurs.

In clinical trials for different cancer types, there were additional serious and sometimes fatal side effects that occurred in more people who received Avastin than in those in the comparison group. The formation of an abnormal passage from parts of the body to another part (non-GI fistula formation) was seen in 0.3 percent or less of people. Severe to life-threatening stroke or heart problems were seen in 2.6 percent of people. Too much protein in the urine that led to kidney problems was seen in less than one percent of people. Additional serious side effects that occurred in more people who received Avastin than those in the comparison group included severe to life-threatening high blood pressure, which was seen in five percent to 18 percent of people, and nervous system and vision disturbances (reversible posterior leukoencephalopathy syndrome), which was seen in less than 0.1 percent of people. Infusion reactions with the first dose of Avastin were uncommon and occurred in less than three percent of people, and severe reactions occurred in 0.2 percent of people. Avastin can cause fertility issues for women. Avastin could cause a woman’s ovaries to stop working and may impair her ability to have children.

Common side effects that occurred in more than 10 percent of people who received Avastin for different cancer types, and at least twice the rate of the comparison group, were nosebleeds, headache, high blood pressure, inflammation of the nose, too much protein in the urine, taste change, dry skin, rectal bleeding, tear production disorder, back pain, and inflammation of the skin (exfoliative dermatitis). Across all trials, treatment with Avastin was permanently stopped in 8.4 percent to 21 percent of people because of side effects.

Patients who are pregnant or thinking of becoming pregnant should talk with their doctor about the potential risk of loss of the pregnancy or the potential risk of Avastin to the fetus during and following Avastin therapy, and the need to continue an effective birth control method for at least six months following the last dose of Avastin.

Women should be advised to discontinue nursing or discontinue treatment with Avastin, taking into account the importance of Avastin to the mother.

Report side effects to the FDA at (800) FDA-1088 or http://www.fda.gov/medwatch.

Patients and caregivers may also report side effects to Genentech at (888) 835-2555.

For full Prescribing Information and Boxed WARNINGS on Avastin, please visit http://www.avastin.com.

About Genentech

Founded more than 35 years ago, Genentech is a leading biotechnology company that discovers, develops, manufactures and commercializes medicines to treat patients with serious or life-threatening medical conditions. The company, a member of the Roche Group, has headquarters in South San Francisco, California. For additional information about the company, please visit http://www.gene.com.

SOURCE: Genentech