avastin

Even the Avastin trial mentioned in the article is not truly against placebo.

Pharmaceutical companies don't help their image when they behave as poorly as Roche has in the UK with avastin and lucentis.

Genentech have no problem at all whatsoever with most off-label uses of Avastin (e.g.

The article left out a number of very good scientific reasons why lucentis and avastin are not bioequivalent and should not be subsituted.

But even at Mexican prices you will probably not be able to pay out of pocket for something like Avastin (cancer) or Copaxone (multiple sclerosis).

The two arms were: (a) standard treatment + placebo (b) standard treatment + Avastin So, while it is true that placebo was compared to Avastin, it could be that Avastin acts identically to current standard of care.

Ophthalmologists were using Avastin off-label for wet AMD.

Then there was the scare in Florida were a batch of Avastin from a compound pharmacy was contaminated and a ton of patients lost their sight to infections.

This is not like a small molecule where a little change makes a huge difference; Avastin is a giant antibody and Lucentis is a part if the same antibody.

But there have been so many drugs like Avastin (which sadly I had personal experience with through my wife's cancer, which were supposed to be breakthroughs..

They will be the ones to require the cheaper alternative, similar to the way many insurers require the use of Avastin for AMD unless there is a good reason to use Lucentis.

The last practice I worked for was buying between $1.2 and $1.8 millon worth of lucentis, a few hundred grand worth of Eyelea and a boatload Avastin every month.

That is, Avastin could show no impact in this trial and show impact in "just Avastin" vs.

If you google "Avastin breakthrough" (remember, we lay people have far more time with Dr.

The Post conveniently left out that the Pharm company found that "Avastin patients had a 30% higher risk of serious systemic side effects than Lucentis patients did".

"Some who take Avastin significantly beat the average" is probably indeed worth noting because the naive RCT may be disguising significant effects of clinical importance.

Avastin is a biologic drug, so it's not possible for generic manufacturers to produce an exactly equivalent product.

This article seems to miss the bigger picture -- why is Lucentis 40x more expensive than Avastin?

Martin noted that while small, probably random effects favored Lucentis in some cases and in others they favored Avastin.