Approval No. 5 for Avastin

You can officially add Avastin to the list of targeted drugs approved for kidney cancer. Genentech just reported that the Food and Drug Administration has approved Avastin (bevacizumab) plus interferon for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma, the most common type of kidney cancer. (Check out our feature on kidney cancer from the current Summer issue.) That's the fifth cancer for which the FDA has deemed Avastin worthy of its stamp of approval. Just this past May, the regulatory agency greenlighted the drug for a type of brain tumor called glioblastoma multiforme, and before that, Avastin was OKed for metastatic colorectal cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, and metastatic breast cancer. (Its first approval came in 2004.)We'll cover the approval in more detail in the upcoming Fall issue, which drops in September.