New Avastin data could be bad news for Lucentis
pharmafile | August 14, 2012 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | DMO, Lucentis, Novartis, Roche, avastin, off label, off-label, wet AMD
The day after Novartis gained a new US licence for Lucentis to treat diabetic macular oedema, new data was published showing an off-label rival was just as effective at treating the disease.
Yesterday Lucentis gained a US licence extension to treat patients with diabetic macular oedema (DMO), a common eye condition amongst diabetics that can lead to blindness.
It has two other licences: one for wet age-related macular oedema and the other for central vein occlusion. All three licences saw the drug bring in revenues of more than $1 billion last year.
But the drug has been under pressure from the off-label use of Roche’s cancer drug Avastin (bevacizumab). It is chemically similar to Lucentis (ranibizumab) – the US rights of which Roche owns – but is much cheaper than the licensed alternative.
Many ophthalmologists have been using Avastin to treat wet AMD patients, which has led to Novartis lowering the price of its drug in Switzerland and the UK.
Recent data coming from government funded trials showed that Avastin was as effective as Lucentis in treating wet AMD, which has potentially given ophthalmologists greater confidence in using the drug.
But today’s new data could mean Lucentis’s DMO licence will also come under threat from Avastin, after it was shown to be just as good at treating the disease as Lucentis.
The new study, published in the BMJ, concludes that there “is no difference in effectiveness between bevacizumab and ranibizumab”.
The study’s authors looked at online studies of the two drugs on Medline, Embase and Cochrane between 1996 and 2011, and analysed the efficacy of both treatments separately.
The authors said, however, that a head-to-head study between the two drugs would need to be conducted to show if one drug were superior to the other, although both Roche and Novartis would be unlikely to ever do this themselves.
But there is one such trial currently ongoing in Austria by the Medical University of Vienna, the results of which will be keenly awaited by all involved.
The drug has been used to treat European DMO patients since January 2011, but both the Royal College of Ophthalmologists and the NHS Prescribing Information Centre said that they do not hold information of how many doctors use Avastin off-label for the condition.
The Royal College told InPharm that it would be ‘interesting to know’ what the numbers are, but would not be looking to find this out themselves. The College does not reccomend using Avastin off-label for wet AMD or DMO.
Ben Adams
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