Genentech's Avastin Fails to help breast cancer patients

Genentech Inc.'s drug Avastin failed to help breast cancer patients live longer and had serious side effects, including deaths, U.S. regulators said. The company fell the most in more than a year in New York Stock Exchange trading.

The drug did slow the spread of tumors in a clinical trial compared with patients given chemotherapy alone, reviewers at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in documents posted today on the agency's Web site. Advisers to the FDA will recommend Dec. 5 whether to approve Avastin for breast cancer.

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Tags: Avastin, Genentech, breast cancer, FDA, chemotherapy