FDA gives Mer­ck ‘re­al-time’ OK for Keytru­da, of­fer­ing a peek at the lat­est ex­ten­sion of the agen­cy's da­ta ex­press high­way

The FDA doesn’t al­ways wait for a mar­ket­ing ap­pli­ca­tion to come in be­fore it be­gins its re­view these days. And that suits Mer­ck just fine.

The fed­er­al agency has stamped a full ap­proval — fol­low­ing last year’s con­di­tion­al OK — on Mer­ck’s mega-block­buster Keytru­da for front­line use in a chemo com­bo for fight­ing non-squa­mous non-small cell lung can­cer. Reg­u­la­tors based their de­ci­sion on the da­ta set from KEYNOTE-189, put on dis­play last April, one in a se­ries of late-stage tri­als that Mer­ck has been rolling out to grab the lead on the PD-1/L1 mar­ket from a group of tough com­peti­tors at Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb.

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