medwireNews: For patients with unresectable stage III non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), first-line pembrolizumab plus concurrent chemoradiotherapy is feasible, say the KEYNOTE-799 investigators.
Salma Jabbour (Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, New Brunswick, USA) presented the open-label trial results at the virtual 2020 ASCO Annual Meeting, and described the regimen as having “promising antitumor activity.”
The objective response rate (ORR) was 67.0% for the 112 patients with squamous or nonsquamous NSCLC assigned to receive treatment with pembrolizumab, paclitaxel, and carboplatin alone and then in combination with radiation, followed by pembrolizumab monotherapy, for a total of 17 cycles.
Salma Jabbour discusses the KEYNOTE-799 study (6:54)
And the ORR was 56.6% for the 53 nonsquamous NSCLC patients instead given treatment consisting initially of pembrolizumab, pemetrexed, and cisplatin alone, then with thoracic radiation, and finally, pembrolizumab monotherapy, for a total of 17 cycles.
Most responses continued for at least 6 months; the 6-month progression-free survival rates in the mixed and nonsquamous cohorts were 81.4% and 85.2%, respectively, while the corresponding overall survival rates were 87.2% and 94.8%.
The co-primary endpoint of grade 3 or more severe pneumonitis occurred in 8.0% and 5.5% of the two cohorts, “consistent with the established toxicity profiles of [concurrent chemotherapy] for stage III NSCLC and pembrolizumab monotherapy,” Jabbour told delegates.
medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare. © 2020 Springer Healthcare part of the Springer Nature Group