Roche suffers $10 billion hit on Avastin drug failure

The market capitalization of Roche Holding dropped by as much as $10 billion on Wednesday after the company said the key drug Avastin doesn't reduce the risk of colon cancer returning any more than just using chemotherapy.

The failure of the late-stage trial is a big setback for Roche, which just spent $46.8 billion buying out the shares it didn't already own in Genentech, which developed Avastin.

Though the Basel, Switzerland company has never said it bought the South San Francisco-based Genentech simply on hopes that Avastin would be prescribed to take on more forms of cancer, the deal was struck in full knowledge that results of the trial were due in about a month.

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- Posted: 2009-04-22 08:35:06

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