Hot on the heels of its Bris­tol-My­ers slap­down, Mer­ck scores PhI­II blad­der can­cer suc­cess with Keytru­da

Mer­ck is tak­ing an­oth­er step for­ward in its cam­paign to ex­pand the block­buster mar­ket for its check­point in­hibitor Keytru­da. The phar­ma gi­ant, on­ly re­cent­ly hand­ed the edge in lung can­cer af­ter a dev­as­tat­ing set­back at Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb, says its Phase III for blad­der can­cer hit the pri­ma­ry end­point dur­ing a pre­lim­i­nary eval­u­a­tion.

Mer­ck will now wrap the study ear­ly and hus­tle to the FDA, look­ing to chal­lenge Roche, which land­ed a land­mark ap­proval for its check­point ri­val Tecen­triq for blad­der can­cer back in May. Keytru­da was test­ed in treat­ment-re­sis­tant pa­tients fol­low­ing plat­inum-based chemo. The con­trol arm in­clud­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tors’ choice of chemo.

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