ASCO 2017: KEYNOTE-024 Update on Pembrolizumab in Advanced Lung Cancer
An update of the KEYNOTE-024 trial confirms the continued benefit of first-line pembrolizumab over chemotherapy in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), with improved outcomes despite increased crossover from first-line chemotherapy. At the 2017 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, Julie R. Brahmer, MD, of Johns Hopkins Sidney Simmel Comprehensive Cancer Center in Baltimore, reported the updated results on disease progression after the next line of therapy and overall survival in these patients (Abstract 9000).
In the KEYNOTE-024 trial, 305 patients with advanced NSCLC and a programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) tumor proportion score (TPS) of at least 50% received either pembrolizumab (n=154) or investigator-choice platinum-doublet chemotherapy (n=151). A total of 48 patients who received pembrolizumab received second-line or greater therapy, as did 97 patients who received chemotherapy (including 80 patients who crossed over to the pembrolizumab study arm).
Based on 19 months of median follow-up, the use of pembrolizumab was associated with an improvement in 12-month overall survival over chemotherapy (70.3 months vs 54.8 months). Progression-free survival after the next line of therapy also favored pembrolizumab over chemotherapy (67.2 months vs 44.4 months).
