Roche announced today that its product known as Avastin (bevacizumab) has been approved by the European Union for treatment of ovarian cancer. When used in combination with standard chemotherapy (carboplatin and paclitaxel) it will be part of a front-line (first-line following surgery) regime.
Hal Barron M.D., Chief Medical Officer and Head, Global Product Development said :
“Today’s approval of Avastin marks the first major treatment advance in newly diagnosed ovarian cancer in 15 years …
This is the fifth tumor type for which Avastin has been approved in Europe, making it one of …

An Oxford University team is to start safety trials in human volunteers after lab tests showed the vaccine works against all strains of the parasite.
UK scientists recently found the route malaria uses to enter blood cells.
They hope to target this pathway in a new approach to developing a vaccine against malaria, which kills hundreds of thousands of people a year.
Several potential malaria vaccines are already being tested in clinical trials; although no vaccine has yet been licensed for use.
Early clinical trials in Africa suggest a vaccine known as RTS,S appears …

Researchers from the University of Georgia and the Mayo Clinic in Arizona have developed a vaccine that dramatically reduces tumors in a mouse model that mimics 90 percent of human breast and pancreatic cancer cases – including those that are resistant to common treatments.
The vaccine, described this week in the early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals a promising new strategy for treating cancers that share the same distinct carbohydrate signature, including ovarian and colorectal cancers.
“This vaccine elicits a very strong immune response,” said …

36% of post-menopausal breast cancer patients who take aromatase inhibitors do not complete their treatment, because the drug’s side effects are so unpleasant, researchers from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine reported at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. Aromatase inhibitors are administered after chemotherapy, radiotherapy and breast cancer surgery, usually for about five years.
Lynne Wagner and team carried out a study involving 700 females who were on aromatase inhibitors. Within four years, 36% of them had dropped out of treatment because the side effects linked to them were …

Ebola is a rare but frightening disease with no cure. There are also worries of it being used in a terrorist attack. Now, researcher Charles Arntzen, from the Biodesign Institute® at Arizona State University, along with colleagues from ASU, the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, MD, have made interesting progress in the search for a vaccine against the disease.
Their work, which is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, has a cutting edge …