Five Year Lung Cancer Survival Update: Pembrolizumab continued to improve OS than docetaxel in patients with PD-L1 TPS ≥50% and TPS ≥1%.

FDA approved pembrolizumab for adjuvant treatment following resection and platinum-based chemotherapy for stage 1B (T2a ≥4 cm), 2, or 3A non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Recent clinical trials of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer showed that combinations of immunotherapy with chemotherapy are a very effective first line treatment.Combining pembrolizumab with conventional chemotherapy in the first-line setting significantly prolongs median overall survival in patients with metastatic squamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). For some people with advanced NSCLC, […]

[…] look really promising based on early data, but sometimes that early data doesn’t pan out. So the 2 recent examples in small-cell lung cancer were nivolumab and pembrolizumab. And they both got accelerated approvals based on phase 1 and 2 data showing promising response rates for small-cell lung cancer. Both those FDA approvals required […]

[…] Patients with NSCLC and SBM age 65 years or older at diagnosis from 2010 to 2019 SEER-Medicare database and received US Food and Drug Administration–approved ICIs ( pembrolizumab/nivolumab/ipilimumab/atezolizumab/durvalumab/cemiplimab) and/or chemotherapy (platinum-based doublets/taxane/pemetrexed/gemcitabine) as first-line systemic treatment were included, excluding those with no cranial radiation or ever being treated with targeted therapies. Overall survival time […]

[…] response to cancer cells. When used in combination with chemotherapy, these drugs increased overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) from chemotherapy alone. (Recently, Merck pulled its immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda), a PD-1 inhibitor, for SCLC treatment. The drug failed to show statistically significant improvement in overall survival (OS) for SCLC patients. It is still an […]

Merck pulls Keytruda for SCLC: On March 1, 2021, pharmaceutical company, Merck announced plans to pull Ketruda for SCLC. Merck’s Keytruda ( pembrolizumab) is the dominant checkpoint inhibitor in the immuno-oncology space, approved for a laundry list of cancer indications. In the third quarter of 2020 alone, Keytruda had sales of $3.7 billion, an increase of […]

Keytruda Meets Trial Goals for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treatment In the phase 3 KEYNOTE-671 trial evaluating Keytruda ( pembrolizumab) as preoperative treatment (a regimen given before and after surgier) in patients with resectable stage 2, 3a or 3b non-small cell lung cancer has met one of its primary endpoints of event-free survival (time after treatment without […]

[…] Trial Has Broader Eligibility Criteria, Overcomes Barriers The National Cancer Institute (NCI) launched the phase 3 Pragmatica-Lung Study (S2302) clinical trial evaluating Cyramza (ramucirumab) plus Keytruda ( pembrolizumab) for patients with stage 3 or recurrent non-small cell lung cancer, according to a press release from the agency. The Pragmatica study got its name due […]