Pembrolizuab Monotherapy Extended Survival in Advanced Lung Cancer

CHICAGO, IL—Patients whose non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) expressed more than one per cent of the programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) tumor proportion score (TPS) lived longer when treated with the anti programmed death 1 (PD-1) antibody pembrolizumab than a control group of patients receiving platinum-based chemotherapy in the open-label, phase three KEYNOTE-042 study reported at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting plenary session.  https://meetinglibrary.asco.org/record/165950/abstract

Better survival

Principal author of the study, Gilberto Lopes MD, Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Miami’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center tells the Audio Journal of Onclogy patients treated with pebrolizumab monotherapy lived a median of four to eight months longer than those who received chemotherapy and had fewer severe side effects than with chemotherapy (18 per cent as compared with 41 per cent).

John Heymach