RetGen

Roche Australia said yesterday it would stop supplying Avastin to pharmacies that repackage it for the treatment of wet macular degeneration, a common age-related cause of legal blindness.

"Patients will go blind, there's no doubt about it," said retinal specialist Dr Wilson Heriot, the Victorian chairman of the Macular Degeneration Foundation. "That sounds emotive, but it is absolutely real."

Roche is accused of restricting access to Avastin to force patients onto Lucentis, which at $6000 is 10 times more expensive. The two drugs work exactly the same way but Lucentis is a smaller molecule and has been clinically tested for use in eyes. Avastin has been widely used but not formally tested.

Lucentis is distributed in Australia by Novartis but belongs to Genentech, an American biotechnology company majority owned by Roche. Genentech loses profit with every patient treated with Avastin.