Initially, Avastin was considered a wonder drug which can cure cancer. It was approved by U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating advanced lung and breast cancer.

Avastin is costly with a year's dose racking up $100,000. However Avastin is losing its status as wonder drug due to two main reasons.

Firstly the curing abilities of this medicine are under question. Secondly its high costs are not justified according to FDA. This medicine is used by patients with advanced lung, colon and breast cancer. However this medicine only helps people live longer by a few months.

Avastin or bevacizumab is a therapeutic antibody designed to inhibit the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) protein. This drug simply retards the ability of tumor to grow and spread in body by stopping the blood supply to the tumor.

According to FDA this drug gives patients a sense of well-being and the ability to carry out daily tasks without exhaustion or pain. However it is effective only in those cases where the disease is not in advanced stage. This doesn’t justify such a high cost of this drug. FDA is reconsidering the approval regarding the expanded use of this drug.

The drug gives patients a sense of well-being and the ability to carry out daily tasks without exhaustion or pain. The symptoms of cancer are reduced only in cases when the disease is not that aggressive. That’s why one cannot completely justify its cost, the FDA said, thus wondering the approval for expanded use of the drug.

According to Dr. Leonard Saltz, a colon cancer specialist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the “incremental benefit” of Avastin “may be more modest than we want to admit.”

According to Genentech, the manufacturer of Avastin, this medicine is presently used by 10,000 Americans. D. Levinson, Genentech's chief executive officer justified the high cost of this drug by saying “The quest is to eliminate the disease. And, yes, there is going to be a cost to that.”