The study of Nexavar for liver cancer that was the talk of last year’s ASCO conference gets its closeup this week, with publication of the full results in the New England Journal of Medicine. The basic findings are the same as they were at ASCO: In patients with late-stage disease, median survival was 10.7 months for those who took the drug, compared with 7.9 months for those who took placebo.

The Health Blog talked with Josep Llovet, the lead author of the study, at ASCO last year. Click on the video window at left to watch that interview.

Before this study, no drug had been shown to extend life for liver cancer patients. The results were enough to win approval for Nexavar for liver cancer in late 2007 (it had already been approved for kidney cancer).

As an editorial accompanying the study notes, the drug’s survival benefit in the study was “modest.” And its side effects included skin problems and diarrhea.

But the drug, co-marketed by Bayer and Onyx, may yet prove to have greater benefits — perhaps in combination with other drugs, perhaps to reduce the risk of recurrence in the minority of patients whose disease is detected early, the editorial suggests.

In its present use, Nexavar’s modest benefit comes at a high cost: $5,400 per month in the U.S., according to the editorial. The high price may prove even more of an issue in the developing world — more than half of annual deaths from the disease occur in China, and the bulk of the rest occur in Sub-Saharan Africa, the editorial notes.