Bevacizumab is an anti-angiogenesis drug used in treatment of cancer. It is used in combination with standard chemotherapy drugs in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved bevacizumab for use in 2004. The medicine is sold in the United States by Genetech, Inc. under the name Avastin. When normal cells are damaged or old they undergo apoptosis; cancer cells, however, avoid apoptosis. ... Chemotherapy is the use of chemical substances to treat disease. ... Diagram of the stomach, colon, and rectum Colorectal cancer includes cancerous growths in the colon, rectum and appendix. ... The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the government agency responsible for regulating food (human and animal), dietary supplements, drugs (human and animal), cosmetics, medical devices (human and animal), biologics and blood products in the United States. ... 2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Bevacizumab is a monoclonal antibody, and was the first commercially available angiogenesis inhibitor. It stops tumor growth by preventing the formation of new blood vessels. Monoclonal antibodies (mAb) are antibodies that are identical because they were produced by one type of immune cell, all clones of a single parent cell. ... See the article about cancer for the main article about malignant tumors. ...

The drug was first developed as a genetically engineered version of a mouse antibody that contains both human and mouse components. Genentech is able to produce the antibody in production-scale quantities.

Bevacizumab is believed to work by targeting and inhibiting the function of a natural protein called vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) that stimulates new blood vessel formation. Vascular endothelial growth factor or VEGF is an important signal protein involved in angiogenesis. ...

Bevacizumab has also demonstrated activity in kidney cancer, lung cancer and breast cancer