08/07/2018

A Message From Your Bulletin Sponsor

Merck

Merck’s KEYTRUDA® (pembrolizumab) Plus Pemetrexed (ALIMTA®) and Platinum Chemotherapy Reduced the Risk of Death by Half Compared with Chemotherapy Alone as First-Line Treatment for Advanced Nonsquamous NSCLC in Phase 3 KEYNOTE-189 Study

KEYTRUDA Combination Improved Overall Survival in Patients Regardless of PD-L1 Expression, Including Patients Who Tested Negative for PD-L1 Results Presented at AACR 2018 and Published in The New England Journal of Medicine Also Show Significant Improvement in Progression-Free Survival, with Risk of Progression or Death Reduced by Nearly Half.

Merck announced results from KEYNOTE-189, a pivotal Phase 3 trial evaluating KEYTRUDA ® , Merck’s anti-PD-1 therapy, in combination with pemetrexed (ALIMTA®) and cisplatin or carboplatin for the first-line treatment of metastatic nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Findings showed that the KEYTRUDA-pemetrexed-platinum chemotherapy combination significantly improved overall survival (OS), reducing the risk of death by half compared with chemotherapy alone (HR=0.49 [95% CI, 0.38-0.64]; p<0.00001). In pre-specified exploratory analyses, an OS benefit was observed regardless of PD-L1 expression in the three PD-L1 categories that were evaluated, including: patients whose tumors were negative for PD-L1 (HR=0.59 [95% CI, 0.38-0.92]); patients whose tumors had PD-L1 tumor proportion scores (TPS) of 1-49 percent (HR=0.55 [95% CI, 0.34-0.90]); and patients who had a TPS of greater than or equal to 50 percent (HR=0.42 [95% CI, 0.26-0.68]).  READ MORE