Combining Tarceva and Avastin drugs for treating lung cancer don’t seem to work as expected. Roche Holding AG stated on Monday that these drugs don’t show any decrease in the death caused by this type of cancer. Both Tarceva and Avastin are used as “smart bomb” drugs. They track the sick cells and kill them while leaving the healthy cells intact. Combining them was hoped to increase patients’ lives.

A Phase III of the study is working to add Avastin together with Tarceva and compare the Tarceva alone in treatments for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer which is the common type of lung cancer, Roche and Genentech reported on Monday. The study didn’t give any good results and showed no distinction between using the drugs together and using them separately.

 The only thing that was noticed was that combining the two drugs would have decreased the disease getting worse. Still, Deutsche Bank analysts concluded that this wasn’t a good result because it was expected for the drugs, if combined, to have efficacy without the risk of side effects.

Yet, Roche said that the study needs further data and that after is finished, they will present it at a conference on thoracic oncology in Chicago next month. Avastin and Tarceva are available to be bought for lung cancer both in the United States and Europe.

But Genentech chief medical officer Hal Barron said that they were “disappointed this study did not show an improvement in survival for patients with advanced lung cancer who have a poor prognosis and a disease that is extremely difficult to treat.” He added that they were “encouraged to see the combination of Avastin and Tarceva had clear evidence of biological activity, and will fully analyse the data so that we can apply the insights to our ongoing lung cancer research."