A Miracle Blindness Prevention Drug

Bavacimumab, with the trade name Avastin, is a humanized monoclonal antibody. The drug is first approved by FDA for the using of treating colorectal cancer in February 2004. In the following years 2006 and 2008, Avastin is approved again as the treatment for lung cancer and breast cancer. In 2009, FDA approved the use of Avastin in the treatment of renal cell cancer, one kind of kidney cancer and gliobastoma multiforme, a type of brain cancer. Except for those above approvals by FDA, Avastin never meets its endpoint. It is used in many kinds of cancer treating fields.


The drug's manufacturer, GenenTech, shows great effects through clinical trials that when Avastin is used, the cancer stops growing and the tumors begin to shrink. The main feature making Avastin so effective in curing cancer is that it has the ability to prohibit the function of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a naturally occurring protein which helps to stimulate the growth of new blood vessels. Furthermore, the new blood vessels are responsible for the growth of tumor. In the function aspect, Avastin can be called exactly as the anti-VEGF drug.

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Avastin is found very successful in the treatment of neovasular (wet) age-related macular degeneration (AMD) by Dr. Philip Rosenthal, an associate professor in December 2005. It is regarded as a break though to expand the drug into eye disease field. Wet AMD is caused by the abnormal growth of blood vessels underneath the retina, leaking blood and fluid and finally leading to the scarring of retinal cells. As its anti-VEGF function, Avastin also acts in halting the growth of abnormal blood vessels in wet AMD, which shows dramatic improvement of the patients' vision. It is proved that if the disease can be treated early, the damage is quite minimal. In most cases, the first vision recovering period requires only one week and in the following the recovering process continues.

The bad thing is Avastin is not approved by FDA in the use of wet AMD. As Avastin is much cheaper than the approved treatment of Lucentis, and they have almost the same effect in treating wet AMD, there are a lot of eye-care professionals sue to approve Avastin in the use of wet AMD.

Avastin, which can be regarded as one of the greatest inventions in the 20 century, helps a lot of patients either with cancer or wet AMD disease to improve their conditions or expand their life. Also, I do not think it is an end to Avastin, because the effective treatment until now will conduct many research centers to continue to search for the application of Avastin in other fields or make an improvement of the drug itself.
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