Avastin Announcement: Roche says its drug Avastin, which the FDA has recommended stripping of its breast-cancer indication, has been backed for that purpose in Europe, the WSJ reports . The drug is used in combination with chemotherapy in breast-cancer patients, but the FDA has said its safety and efficacy aren’t sufficient to warrant its use in that setting. Roche will get a chance to argue against the FDA’s proposal at a hearing in late June. Cutting the Rolls: States facing budget squeezes are removing adults from government insurance programs intended for the working poor who cannot afford private policies, the New York Times reports . Pennsylvania just shut down its adultBasic program, affecting more than 41,000 adults, while Washington cut 17,500 adults from its own plan, the paper says. Laying in Liquids: Large chain pharmacies are compounding capsules of Tamiflu, the anti-flu medicine, into liquid form because the manufacturer’s liquid version is in

short supply, the WSJ reports . Walgreen, CVS Caremark and Rite Aid all tell the paper their pharmacists are doing at least some compounding. There was an unexplained increase in demand for the liquid form of the antiviral drug, which is produced by Roche’s Genentech unit. MS Drug Setback: The FDA wants more data on the risks of cladribine, the multiple sclerosis pill developed by Merck KGaA, before it will consider approving the drug, Bloomberg News reports . The company had hoped the drug would get out of the starting blocks early to compete with Gilenya, Novartis’s oral medication for MS, approved by the FDA in September . Merck — not connected to the U.S.-based company — has already pulled its application to sell the drug in Europe following a negative evaluation there, BN says. Image: iStockphoto

The rest is here: 
A.M. Vitals: E.U. Backs Roche’s Avastin for Breast Cancer