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ASCO conference: Merck’s Keytruda effective in nearly 40% kidney cancer patients

Merck & Co. Inc.'s cancer immunotherapy Keytruda is showing anticancer effect in almost 40% of patients with a form of advanced kidney cancer, interim results from an ongoing clinical trial known as Keynote-427 revealed.

The U.S.-based drug manufacturer's mid-stage study is evaluating whether patients with advanced clear cell renal cell carcinoma can benefit when they receive Keytruda as a single agent and as their first treatment in the difficult-to-treat cancer type.

The study has enrolled 110 patients.

The data, presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology, showed that 38.2% of patients who received Keytruda experienced tumor size reduction over a median follow-up period of 12.1 months.

Among a subset of patients whose tumor expresses PD-L1, a protein found on the surface of cancer cells, the response rate was 50%.

The disease control rate for the study was 59.1%, with 67.2% of patients experiencing a decrease of tumor burden, a measure of the amount of cancer in the body.

The median time to respond to treatment was 2.8 months, while 74.8% of patients responded to treatment for at least six months.

At six months, the overall survival rate was 92.7% and progression-free survival rate, or the period during which the disease did not worsen, was at 60.2%.

Severe treatment-related adverse reactions were reported in over 30% of patients.

The 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting is expected to bring together more than 32,000 professionals from all over the world, with more than 2,500 study abstracts to be presented on-site and an additional 3,350 abstracts to be published online.