What is 'bevacizumab'?

What is 'bevacizumab'?

Christian Cable, Dr. Ryan Osborne & Dr. Noam Z. Drazin (Cancer Experts) gives expert video advice on: What is 'biologic therapy'?; Will biologic therapy 'cure' cancer?; What are the side effects of biologic therapy? and more...

Bevacizumab is an antibody against tumor blood vessel growth, and it actually decreases the amount of blood vessel growth, or angiogenesis. So, these are exciting new agents. Biologic agents have different side effects from chemotherapy. They do not kill rapidly dividing cells, so they do not cause hair loss or nausea or low blood counts as chemotherapy may. Instead, because they're usually engineered in another species, perhaps a mouse, they often cause allergic reactions. So these medicines are infused slowly, usually through the veins, and people are given medicine such as Benadryl and Tylenol, perhaps steroids, to prevent allergic reactions. After the medicines are actually in the body, the side effects are usually very modest.