King Keytru­da floun­ders in an­oth­er piv­otal can­cer study. And that may spur doubts about Mer­ck­'s stay­ing pow­er

The king of the PD-(L)1 class is see­ing a few cracks start to ap­pear in the crown.

Mer­ck re­port­ed Tues­day evening that its Phase III piv­otal dubbed KEYNOTE-361 failed to show a sig­nif­i­cant ad­van­tage for Keytru­da/chemo com­bo pa­tients over chemo alone in front­line blad­der can­cer. And com­ing af­ter some mixed re­sults for triple neg­a­tive breast can­cer and not so hot re­sults for small cell lung can­cers, the lat­est set­back is like­ly to leave some an­a­lysts won­der­ing how Mer­ck’s many ri­vals are like­ly to take ad­van­tage of the weak­ness.

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