Roche’s IM­pow­er 132 hits on pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival, but Mer­ck re­mains in con­trol — for now — on front­line lung can­cer

Roche just leaped for­ward in the rank­ings of the big league lung can­cer game. But they’re still not ready yet to chal­lenge a dom­i­nant Mer­ck.

The phar­ma gi­ant re­port­ed this morn­ing that its IM­pow­er 132 tri­al — a com­bi­na­tion of its PD-L1 Tecen­triq and chemo — scored promis­ing pro­gres­sive-free sur­vival da­ta among pa­tients with front­line cas­es of non-squa­mous non-small cell lung can­cer.

The tri­al, though, has not yet hit suc­cess in over­all sur­vival, leav­ing Mer­ck’s dom­i­nant com­bi­na­tion of Keytru­da and chemo clear­ly out front. Re­searchers will con­tin­ue to fol­low the more than 500 pa­tients in the study, in bad need of a sig­nif­i­cant read­out for OS.

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