Mer­ck suf­fers rare Keytru­da set­back as the block­buster fails a PhI­II prostate can­cer test with Lyn­parza

Mer­ck’s can­cer drug Keytru­da has be­come one of the best-sell­ing med­i­cines on the plan­et thanks to a rig­or­ous clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment pro­gram that’s racked up win af­ter win. But on Tues­day, Mer­ck re­port­ed a rare miss for the PD-1 ther­a­py.

In a Phase III study eval­u­at­ing Keytru­da in com­bi­na­tion with Lyn­parza for late-line prostate can­cer, Mer­ck found the reg­i­men did not re­sult in sur­vival ben­e­fits when com­pared to stan­dard of care. As a re­sult, the com­pa­nies will halt the tri­al ear­ly due to fu­til­i­ty, af­ter an ear­li­er in­ter­im analy­sis al­so found no ben­e­fit for pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival.

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