Genentech’s, err Roche’s, trial of Avastin in treating colon cancer in the adjuvant setting failed to meet its primary endpoint, sending Roche’s stock down 10%.

This was by far the biggest catalyst of the year for Roche. In one of the latest of a series of binary events (do or die if you will) in pharma biotech, the latest being DNDN’s triumph with Provenge, Avastin was not able to demonstrate that it could prevent colon cancer from returning in the early stages of the disease following surgical removal of any tumor(s). Another testament as to why prevention studies are so ridiculously difficult, even for blockbuster drugs backed by multinational big dawgs.

Positive results in the adjuvant setting would have helped expand the $4.5B blockbuster by 20-30%.

Not all hope is lost however, as Genentech’s CMO Hal Barrin said that an initial review of the data suggests that the drug may show some activity in early-stage disease.

The details of the study were not released, but Roche/Genentech (DNA) plans to present the data at ASCO in June.

As for the recent Roche/DNAmerger, Roche had offered as low as $86.50 for the remaining shares of DNA it did not own. The deal ended up with Roche paying $95/share in a deal valued at $46.8B. DNA shareholders definitely got the good slice of the pie, but what about Roche. What are the analysts saying?

Andrew Weiss, an analyst at Vontobel Group in Zurich, told the WSJ:

“Right now, at face value, probably they could have gotten Genentech at a lower price. Five years down the line, we’ll have a far betterunderstanding.”

Karl Heinz Koch, an analyst at Helvea told Bloomberg:

“It was always going to be difficult for the trial to succeed. Avastin relies on synergistic activity with chemotherapy, which works better in patients with a larger tumor mass and that benefit diminishes when you apply it to smaller tumors. The headlines are negative, but it may not be as much doom and gloom as it seems now. (Their comments) suggest that the results are not as horrible as they seem and imply they saw a trend towards statistical significance, so there may be a subset of people for which it is beneficial.”

We’ll be on the lookout at ASCO…

Image from bioethicsbytes

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