medwireNews: Treatment with pembrolizumab has led to a near doubling of the 5-year overall survival (OS) rate relative to chemotherapy among previously untreated patients with PD-L1-high, metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer, report the KEYNOTE-024 investigators.
The rate was 31.9% for the 154 participants with stage IV disease and a PD-L1 tumor proportion score of at least 50% who were randomly assigned to receive up to 2 years of pembrolizumab 200 mg every 3 weeks, and was 16.3% for their 151 counterparts who instead received four to six cycles of platinum-doublet chemotherapy.
Presenting author Julie Brahmer (Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, Baltimore, Maryland, USA) told delegates of the ESMO Virtual Congress 2020 that the difference was observed despite 66% of chemotherapy-treated patients crossing over to the pembrolizumab arm.
Julie Brahmer reports on the 5-year overall survival results from the KEYNOTE-024 study and highlights the key unanswered questions (4:56)
Participants who completed the full course of pembrolizumab had especially favorable outcomes, she said, with a 3-year OS rate from treatment completion of 81% for these 39 patients and just under half (46%) alive without progression or subsequent therapy at data cutoff.
Brahmer commented that the PD-1 inhibitor “continues to show meaningful improvements in OS” since the initial demonstration of its superiority over chemotherapy in this setting, and concluded: “These data confirm 5-year OS outcomes among previously untreated patients in the single-arm KEYNOTE-001 study.”
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