Hot on Roche’s heels, Merck spells out mixed Keytruda data in adjuvant NSCLC
Is Merck ready to crack open a major new market for its PD-1 star?
The pharma giant said so as it released full data from the Phase III KEYNOTE-091 study, which tested Keytruda against placebo as an adjuvant treatment for a group of patients with stage IB-IIIA non-small cell lung cancer.
Keytruda, when given after surgical resection of tumor, met the co-primary endpoint of disease-free survival regardless of PD-L1 expression, cutting the risk of disease recurrence or death by 24% (HR=0.76, p=0.0014). But inexplicably, the other co-primary endpoint — which focuses on a subgroup of patients whose tumors express PD-L1, as measured by tumor proportion score ≥50% — was not statistically significant (HR=0.82, p=0.14).
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