Findings of a new clinical trial showed that in patients with advanced lung cancer, Merck & Co.'s immune boosting drug Keytruda could be a better treatment option than chemotherapy.
The study, which was published in New England Journal of Medicine on Oct. 9, involved patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumor had not yet spread to other parts of the body and who received no prior treatment.
NSCLC is the most common type of the disease comprising between 85 and 90 percent of lung cancer diagnosis.
The standard line treatment for NSCLC patients has been chemotherapy with patients living an average of 12 to 14 months after the start of treatment. Results of the study showed that six months after starting treatment, only 72 percent of those on chemotherapy were alive while about 80 percent of those who took Keytruda survived six months after the start of treatment.
Nearly 28 percent of chemotherapy patients experienced significant shrinkage of tumor compared with almost 45 percent in those who received Keytruda.
As for side effects of the treatment, 90 percent of those who received chemotherapy experienced unwanted effects of treatment such as anemia and nausea compared with 73 percent in patients who received Keytruda. Severe side effects were likewise experienced at a higher rate among those who received chemotherapy.
"In patients with advanced NSCLC and PD-L1 expression on at least 50% of tumor cells, pembrolizumab was associated with significantly longer progression-free and overall survival and with fewer adverse events than was platinum-based chemotherapy," the study concluded.
The study began in September 2014 but it was stopped early in June this year due to recommendations from an independent monitoring committee. The recommendations were based on interim results that showed Keytruda was superior to chemotherapy.
"Chemotherapy has been the standard treatment for most patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer for decades, but survival rates remain low," said Merck president Roger Perlmutter.
"Our new data suggest that KEYTRUDA treatment can offer meaningful improvement over chemotherapy in a broad array of patients. In this sense, these studies may represent a turning point in worldwide efforts to control lung cancer."
Results of the new study may likely lead more doctors to favor Keytruda over Bristol-Myers Squibb's immunotherapy Opdivo following a surprise announcement by Bristol-Myers in August that its drug fared worse than chemotherapies in a Phase III trial.
Opdivo has been the leader in the lucrative lung cancer market for new drugs that fight cancer by stimulating the body's immune systems. It generated global sales of $1.54 billion for the first six months of this year outpacing Keytruda, which had global sales of $563 million, by a large margin.
