The ASCO meeting I'm at right now is so busy that there really isn't time to write a new post (though I'm still "tweeting from the meeting"). Though the talk show hows just air re-runs of old shows when they're on vacation, I'm trying to continue to add new content to the website during this time (and it's about as far from a vacation as anyone has in Orlando).

The ASCO meeting I'm at right now is so insanely busy during the days and nights that it's next to impossible to carve out the time to write posts during the meeting. While the talk show hosts just show re-runs while they're on vacation, we're at least going to put up some new content, even if it's from work previously done (and this is far from a vacation).

We got some big news in the form of a press release today: avastin (bevacizumab) didn't produce a survival benefit in the European AVAiL (AVAstin in Lung Cancer) trial of cisplatin/gemcitabine with or without avastin at either a higher dose (15 mg/kg IV every three weeks) or a lower dose (7.5 mg/kg IV every three weeks):

Last week, Genentech had a press release in which they disclosed some potentially important information about a large randomized trial being done in Europe with Avastin. This study, known as the AVAIL trial, enrolled just over a thousand first-line patients with advanced NSCLC to receive their most common standard chemotherapy, cisplatin and gemcitabine, alone or in combination with Avastin at either of two dose levels, 7.5 mg/m2 and 15 mg/m2. The basic design is as shown in this figure: