How often have we seen that caveat in news reports about FDA advisory committee meetings? But seldom is it as close as it was yesterday, when Genentech/Roche's Avastin fell 5-4 before the agency's oncologic drugs advisory committee, which was considering the blockbuster cancer drug as a treatment for recurrent or metastatic breast cancer.
Reuters notes that so far Roche stock has fallen more than 4% on the news on Thursday morning in Europe, while Genentech took a whopping 9% hit on Wednesday.
The WSJ reminds us that docs in the US are already prescribing Avastin in these indications off label, but that the FDA's stamp would allow Genentech to promote in that indication and make it more likely insurers would pick up the tab.
What's more, Genentech based its application on a National Cancer Institute study that acutally shows a significant Avastin benefit in a measurement called "progression-free survival," which nearly doubled to 11.3 months for patients on the drug plus paclitaxel vs. 5.8 months on paclitaxel alone.
There was no meaningful difference in overall survival, however.
So, will FDA look at the panel's slim margin and go ahead and approve the drug on the progression-free survival data? If not, are other drugs out there in the clinic that show little in the way of survival benefit (yet solid surrogate-endpoint data) going to cause heartache for companies and their investors?
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