The role of bevacizumab in the management of advanced non-small cell lung cancer was well established by two multinational, multi-center randomized studies. The first study, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) 4599,1 was conducted in a relatively homogenous population, based in the USA. The second study, Avastin in Lung (AVAiL),2 targeted a global population that included both Caucasian and Asian patients. The addition of bevacizumab to standard platinum-based combination therapy improved progression-free survival (PFS) in both studies and overall survival (OS) in ECOG 4599.1, 2 Presumably, information from these studies should be applicable to both Caucasian and East Asian populations. To date, there is no evidence of ethnic diversity in anti-angiogenesis-related treatment outcomes. The major difference between the East Asian and Caucasian populations is the greater incidence of activated epidermal growth factor (EGFR) mutations in the former.3 It is well established that patients with the EGFR mutation have better outcomes when treated with EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI),4-7 and thus the survival outcomes of any clinical trial have to be interpreted in light of the EGFR mutation incidence in a given study population. Therefore, the related question regarding the role of anti-angiogenesis in the Asian population is whether the addition of bevacizumab to chemotherapy is beneficial to a population with a higher incidence of EGFR mutations. Four articles in this special issue share the common theme of comparing a combination of chemotherapy with bevacizumab with chemotherapy alone (Table 1). End-points for these studies include PFS, OS and cost effectiveness. The study methods vary and include subgroup analyses, indirect treatment comparison and health economic models. Mok et al. reported on the Asian subgroup analysis of 105 Asian patients from AVAiL. The combination treatment arm was associated with longer PFS but the difference was not statistically significant, which is likely to be due to the small sample size. Chang et al. utilized the matching-adjusted indirect comparison approach to perform an analysis comparing the survival outcomes of Asian patients from Safety of Avastin in Lung Cancer (SAiL) with patients who received pemetrexed and cisplatin. The results of this study showed that PFS was 7.4 and 6.4 months, respectively. The third study is a similar analysis using the study group from AVAiL, and results from a probabilistic sensitivity analysis demonstrated a higher probability of benefit from bevacizumab in the AVAiL Asian group. The last study represents the only cost-effective analysis of bevacizumab in Asia and the authors report an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of $30 318 in Korea and $54 317 in Taiwan. These are positive and valuable data for clinicians treating Asian patients, as they strongly suggest that a combination treatment with gemcitabine and cisplatin plus bevacizumab is superior to treatment with gemcitabine and cisplatin alone, and is similar to, if not better than pemetrexed and cisplatin alone. Additionally, the value of combination therapy with gemcitibine and cisplatin plus bevacizumab is further supported by its demonstrated cost effectiveness in Asian groups. The results are encouraging and highly suggestive; yet their accuracy is limited by the small sample size and indirect retrospective approach. For example, only 46 SAiL patients were evaluated for PFS and the estimated PFS was numerically longer (7.4 months; 95% confidence interval [CI] 6.7–8.2). Median PFS for pemetrexed plus cisplatin was 6.4 months while the 95% CI was not available; however, these two numerical values can be used only for reference and cannot be used for direct comparison. The subgroup analysis of AVAiL reported improved OS with the lower dose of bevacizumab; although the survival outcomes may have been confounded by a potentially unequal distribution of EGFR mutation and the utilization of EGFR TKI between the treatment and control arms. However, the EGFR mutation status of patients participating in the AVAiL study was not captured, and is therefore unknown. Even when accounting for these limitations, the results of these four studies are extremely valuable to practicing oncologists who treat Asian patients. To further evaluate the benefits of bevacizumab in Asian groups there is a need for a prospective, randomized trial with stratification for the incidence of EGFR mutation. This study was supported by F. Hoffman-La Roche Analytica International Inc. and Jacob M. Willet, MPH (through funding from F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG) provided writing assistance to the author in the preparation of this editorial.