Years af­ter Keytru­da, Roche's Tecen­triq monother­a­py wins first-line NSCLC ap­proval. So does it mat­ter?

Years af­ter Keytru­da, pa­tients with pre­vi­ous­ly un­treat­ed non-small cell lung can­cer (NSCLC) fi­nal­ly have a new check­point in­hibitor monother­a­py op­tion: Roche’s Tecen­triq.

Mer­ck’s star drug cap­tured this ripe in­di­ca­tion in 2016, win­ning the bat­tle for check­point in­hibitor su­prema­cy years ago. On Mon­day, the FDA ap­proved Roche’s Tecen­triq on its own for new­ly di­ag­nosed, metasta­t­ic pa­tients with­out EGFR or ALK mu­ta­tions whose tu­mors car­ry lev­els of the bio­mark­er PD-L1 reg­is­ter­ing at 50% or greater.

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