In a groundbreaking study presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago, researchers from Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital have demonstrated that the cancer immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda) offers a new hope for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
- Significant Survival Rates: Five years post-treatment, 18% of 550 patients treated with pembrolizumab had survived, with the highest survival rate (23.2%) observed in treatment-naïve patients.
- A Tectonic Shift in Treatment: According to study co-author Joseph Paul Eder, MD, this represents a monumental shift in lung cancer treatment, with patients now achieving progression-free survival for at least five years, a scenario previously unimaginable.
- Combination Therapies Show Promise: While pembrolizumab has shown efficacy as a stand-alone therapy, early results from other KEYNOTE studies suggest that combining it with chemotherapy or other treatments could further enhance survival rates.
- Mechanism of Action: Pembrolizumab works by enabling the immune system's killer T cells to target cancer cells more effectively, overcoming a natural 'checkpoint' that prevents the immune system from attacking healthy cells.
- FDA Approvals: Initially approved in 2015 for advanced NSCLC patients with high PD-L1 expression who had failed other therapies, pembrolizumab's approval was expanded in 2016 for first-line therapy in similar patients and in 2017 as a first-line combination therapy for metastatic non-squamous NSCLC regardless of PD-L1 status.
This study, led by Edward B. Garon, M.D., and senior author Rina Hui, with contributions from fourteen other researchers across twelve institutions, underscores the potential of checkpoint inhibition as a revolutionary approach in cancer treatment, targeting characteristics common across cancer types rather than the cancer's location.
Funding for this research was provided by Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ, US.
