Results of the AVADO study showed that adding bevacizumab to docetaxel treatment significantly improved progression-free survival for patients with metastatic breast cancer.

"The AVADO study confirms that the use of bevacizumab in combination with a taxane, in this case docetaxel, increases the chance of reducing tumor burden and prolongs the time for which disease is controlled," said Dr. David W. Miles, consultant medical oncologist, Mount Vernon Hospital, Northwood, Middlesex, United Kingdom.

"The greater ability to control metastatic breast cancer, particularly in patients with immediately life-threatening disease, is reflected in the significant improvement in one-year survival."

Miles presented final overall survival results from the AVADO trial, which included 736 patients in 24 countries at 106 sites, at the annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, USA.

In this double-blind, placebo-controlled phase III trial, researchers randomly assigned patients with HER2-negative, locally recurrent or metastatic breast cancer, and no central nervous system metastases, to first-line treatment with either docetaxel 100 mg/m2 plus placebo (n=241), docetaxel plus bevacizumab 7.5 mg/kg (n=248) or docetaxel plus bevacizumab 15 mg/kg (n=247). The researchers administered docetaxel once every three weeks for up to nine cycles. They administered bevacizumab or placebo once every three weeks until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity.

The primary endpoint was progression-free survival; secondary endpoints included overall survival, time to treatment failure, overall response rate, duration of response and safety.

Primary analysis results about after 10 months of follow-up showed that adding bevacizumab to docetaxel significantly improved progression-free survival without affecting toxicity.

"Bevacizumab does not exacerbate the toxicity of chemotherapy but increases its effect in terms of response rate and progression-free survival," Miles said. "We must make efforts to identify those most likely to benefit based on conventional characteristics or molecular markers, though the latter remain somewhat elusive."

Final overall survival results showed that despite the improved response and progression-free survival results, there was no difference in median survival, Miles said.

Source: www.sabcs.org