New data shows that three drugs made by Roche Holding AG help patients with breast cancer live longer or remain disease-free for longer, the Swiss drugmaker said Wednesday.

Roche, the world’s largest maker of cancer drugs, is presenting new data at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium which show that its Herceptin (trastuzumab), Xeloda (capecitabine) and Avastin (bevacizumab) drugs can help patients with early or advanced breast cancer live longer.

Roche said it would present data from a phase III study that showed that women with locally advanced breast cancer had a significantly greater chance of living disease-free 3years after treatment if they took Herceptin prior to surgery along with standard chemotherapy.

An independent study in Finland and Sweden indicates that chemotherapy pill Xeloda, already proven in advanced breast cancer, might also reduce the recurrence of early breast cancer, the company said.

Roche will also present numerous studies on Avastin, including one from the largest ever safety study in a real-life setting, which shows the drug can give breast cancer patients an average of almost 10 months without their disease getting worse.

Separately, Roche also said it was presenting long-term phase III data at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology that confirms the positive impact of its MabThera therapy for patients in remission with recurrent/resistant Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

It said the data showed that those receiving MabThera lived almost 2.5 years longer without their disease progressing than those not receiving the treatment.

ZURICH (Reuters)