New Use for Cancer Fighter

New Use for Cancer Fighter

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved Genentech Inc.'s colon cancer drug Avastin to fight lung cancer, potentially adding months of life for patients with the most common form of the deadly disease and more than a billion dollars in extra yearly revenue for the company.

Avastin is not a cure for lung cancer. But it added an average of two months of survival time for the late-stage lung cancer patients studied in the clinical trial Genentech submitted to the FDA. That was the first time in a decade that a new drug was able to improve the outcome in advanced lung cancer, said David Schenkein, vice president in charge of hematology and oncology at Genentech. "And it's the first to take average survival out over a year,'' he said.

Schenkein said the South San Francisco company hopes to prove that Avastin will buy even more time for patients treated at an earlier stage of the disease. Future improvements in diagnosing lung cancer may give more patients that opportunity, he said.

At this point, however, the majority of lung cancers are detected after the disease has spread, according to the American Cancer Society. An estimated 174,470 Americans will be diagnosed with lung cancer this year, and about 162,460 are expected to die. About 50 percent of lung cancer patients are still alive five years after diagnosis if doctors catch the disease while it's confined to the lungs, but only 16 percent of patients are diagnosed at this early stage.

Genentech spokesman Edward Lang said 71,000 to 89,000 U.S. lung cancer patients per year will fall into the group approved by the FDA for Avastin treatment: those with non-small-cell lung cancer that has already spread to other organs. The approved group excludes patients with a type of cancer that could make them vulnerable to bleeding in the lungs.

Avastin is designed to thwart the growth of tumors by blocking the formation of new blood vessels to nourish them. It can cause serious side effects, including hemorrhaging and high blood pressure.

The colon cancer treatment has contributed $1.2 billion to Genentech's revenue for the first nine months of 2006. Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Geoffrey Porges said he expects Genentech will receive $1.6 billion in annual Avastin sales for lung cancer treatment by 2010.

The company said the typical monthly price for lung patients will be $8,800. Because lung patients receive higher doses, the cost is double that for colon cancer treatment. The average full cost of lung cancer treatment will be about $56,000.

But Genentech also announced it will cap the cost of Avastin at $55,000 per patient for any 12-month period, for patients under an income level to be determined. The cap, to be initiated in January, will apply to patients receiving Avastin for any FDA-approved condition, whether they are covered by insurance or not.

Porges said the cap is unlikely to reduce revenue in lung cancer cases, because many patients will stop treatment due to side effects or the advance of the disease before they reach the cap.

But he said the cap could eventually reduce Avastin costs for patients with breast cancer, one of the other tumor types for which Genentech is seeking FDA approval.

E-mail Bernadette Tansey at btansey@sfchronicle.com.