Dr. Herbst on Long Term Survival With Pembrolizumab in NSCLC

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, Ensign Professor of Medicine and professor of pharmacology, chief of Medical Oncology, Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital; associate director for Translational Research, Yale Cancer Center; Disease Aligned Research Team (DART) Leader, Thoracic Oncology Program, Yale Cancer Center, discusses long-term survival of patients with non—small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with pembrolizumab (Keytruda).

The long-term survival findings of patients with advanced NSCLC enrolled in the KEYNOTE-010 study, as well as those who have completed 2 years of pembrolizumab, were presented at the 2018 ESMO Congress. At a median follow-up of 42.5 months, pembrolizumab improved overall survival (OS) versus docetaxel in all patients with a median OS of 11.8 months versus 8.4 months. The 36-month OS rates were 23% versus 11%, respectively.

Herbst says that these findings speak to the durability of immunotherapy. The other thing that Herbst found interesting was that in the 14 patients on the trial who progressed and were retreated with pembrolizumab, 6 patients responded again, and 5 had stable disease. This opens the possibility of retreatment with immunotherapy in this patient population.