Mer­ck in­creas­es grip on its lead in lung can­cer, win­ning ap­proval for Keytru­da/chemo com­bo as first-line ther­a­py

Mer­ck has won its bid to ad­vance its lead­er­ship in treat­ing the cru­cial non-small cell lung can­cer mar­ket, gain­ing an FDA ap­proval to start mar­ket­ing a com­bi­na­tion of its PD-1 drug Keytru­da with chemother­a­py as a first-line ther­a­py. And its shares im­me­di­ate­ly popped, surg­ing 4% on the news in af­ter-mar­ket trad­ing while ri­val Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb took an­oth­er beat­ing, slid­ing 2%.

Mer­ck built its bid for an ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval around Phase II da­ta demon­strat­ing that the chemo/check­point com­bo spurred a much high­er con­cen­tra­tion of over­all re­spons­es for NSCLC than chemo alone — 55% vs. 29%, P = 0.0016. High PD-L1 ex­pressers did even bet­ter, though the ap­proval comes through for all pa­tients re­gard­less of bio­mark­er sta­tus. Here’s the link to the new la­bel.

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