Friday, June 7, 2013

National Brain Tumor Society and the Avastin Clinical Trials

While I love to tell you all about progress in treating brain tumors, I think it’s equally important to repost news like the NBTS’s comments on the Avastin Clinical trials.

“National Brain Tumor Society is deeply disappointed in the recently announced results of the AVAglio clinical trial. This trial revealed that Avastin (in combination with standard of care treatments) did not significantly prolong the lives of newly diagnosed GBM patients.

We are equally concerned with additional findings from a large, National Cancer Institute (NCI)-supported clinical trial conducted by the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG). Similar to the AVAglio trial, the RTOG study did not show statistically significant increases in overall survival for newly diagnosed GBM patients taking Avastin in combination with standard of care treatments. Data from the AVAglio and RTOG studies collectively have provided mixed results on issues such as progression-free survival (i.e. a measure of tumor growth in response to a therapy) and quality of life, which will require careful and further analysis to better understand their full meaning in terms of patient care.”


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