Dr. Matulonis on Final Data From KEYNOTE-100 in Recurrent Ovarian Cancer

Ursula A. Matulonis, MD, professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, medical oncologist, chief of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology, Susan F. Smith Center for Women's Cancers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses final data from the phase 2 KEYNOTE-100 trial with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in advanced recurrent ovarian cancer.

First, there was a very small trial with nivolumab (Opdivo) conducted in 2015, which showed a 15% response rate albeit in a small cohort of 20 patients, says Matulonis. Then, single-agent avelumab (Bavencio) data were published in 2019, in which agent was reported to induce a response rate of just under 10%.

Now, updated data from the KEYNOTE-100 trial have been published in the Lancet Oncology with over 30 months median follow-up. In this trial, single-agent pembrolizumab was evaluated in 376 patients with advanced recurrent ovarian cancer. The overall response rate with the agent was approximately 8%. Although that does not appear to be very significant at first glance, it's important to remember that patients who have predominantly platinum-resistant ovarian cancer, single-agent chemotherapy response rates also quite low, says Matulonis. In fact, in some instances, response rates of single-agent chemotherapy in the platinum-resistant setting is 0%, concludes Matulonis.