Roche announced that full results of the pivotal REACH trial will be presented as part of the late breaking abstract session at the forthcoming 50th Annual Meeting of the American Society Hematology (ASH), in San Francisco. The randomized phase-III trial in patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) successfully met its primary endpoint by showing that patients treated with MabThera in combination with current standard chemotherapy were able to significantly extend the amount of time they lived without their disease progressing, compared to patients treated with chemotherapy alone.

Results of the REACH trial will follow less than one day after the presentation of another pivotal phase-III study - CLL8 - which shows that MabThera can significantly increase the time before the disease progresses in patients who have not previously received any other treatment. Together, the two studies provide the strongest evidence yet of MabThera's potential to treat this devastating form of blood cancer.

MabThera will be the main attraction at the annual ASH meeting with more than 270 abstracts being presented covering important trials investigating its use in the treatment of CLL, follicular lymphoma, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, and the bleeding disorder idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, among others. The wealth of new data confirms MabThera as the standard of care in haematological cancers, where it has already been used to treat over 1.5 million patients in its existing indications.