Medicine Matters oncology

So the key results from ASCO presentation now show that we have five years of follow-up since the last patient was enrolled in this study, and we really see that there are a considerable number of patients still alive even at this very long follow-up. In the all-comer population, it was about one out of every five patients that were enrolled in this trial that are still alive now, five years out. And then, if we think about from PDL1 status, the patients with high PDL1 status, it was about one out of every three patients are still alive here at this long-term follow-up.

The other major finding from our current report is that durable responses were really seen in a number of patients. So individuals that had partial response and complete responses to pembrolizumab in this frontline setting tended to have responses that were ongoing for, in many cases, years. So for example, in the all-comer population, the overall duration of response was almost three years, and by PDL1 status, in the high PDL1 group, the median duration of response has not yet been reached. Even in the low PDL1 group, the median duration of response was almost two years.

There is an FDA indication for using immunotherapy in the frontline setting for patients who are cisplatin-ineligible and who have high PDL1 status or for patients who are ineligible for platinum treatment altogether. That's how the FDA indication currently stands. And I think these data really do bear on validating the fact that there is a portion of patients with that unmet need of not being able to tolerate the gold standard, which is cisplatin-based therapy, who can truly benefit from pembrolizumab. And many of those patients can benefit very long-term if they respond to pembrolizumab. And I think it just underscores the idea that having immunotherapy available to these patients in the frontline setting is meaningful and can induce clinically impactful responses in a portion of patients, which can translate into long-term survival.