FDA OKs Mer­ck’s Keytru­da for Hodgkin lym­phoma, a first in blood can­cer

Mer­ck has racked up an­oth­er FDA ap­proval for Keytru­da, this time for clas­si­cal Hodgkin lym­phoma, mark­ing the PD-1 block­er’s first green-light for use in liq­uid tu­mors.

Reg­u­la­tors hand­ed out the OK for pa­tients who had al­ready failed at least three ther­a­pies.

The agency based this ap­proval on the da­ta Mer­ck col­lect­ed in 210 pa­tients from the KEYNOTE-087 tri­al, which demon­strat­ed an over­all re­sponse rate of 69%, with a com­plete re­mis­sion rate — no de­tectable can­cer — of 22% and a par­tial re­mis­sion rate of 47%.

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