Trad­ing places with Bris­tol-My­ers, Mer­ck hit with an­oth­er late-stage set­back on check­point star Keytru­da

Close to a year af­ter Mer­ck $MRK won an ac­cel­er­at­ed FDA OK to use its PD-1 check­point star Keytru­da for treat­ing sec­ond-line cas­es head and neck squa­mous cell car­ci­no­ma in com­bi­na­tion with plat­inum-con­tain­ing chemo, the phar­ma gi­ant an­nounced that its big Phase III study for that in­di­ca­tion failed.

The piv­otal KEYNOTE-040 tri­al failed to meet the pri­ma­ry end­point on over­all sur­vival in com­par­ing the block­buster check­point against stan­dard ther­a­pies, the phar­ma gi­ant re­port­ed. But the cur­rent ap­proval stands nev­er­the­less, Mer­ck said in a state­ment.

Endpoints News

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.