Keytruda (pembrolizumab) helped keep four in 10 patients with advanced melanoma alive three years after starting treatment, according to the results of a new clinical trial.
Advertisement
A new drug for advanced melanoma is dramatically shifting the odds in favor of patients, extending survival for many and even curing some.
Specifically, Kite is on track to report top-line data from an ongoing mid-stage study assessing KTE-C19 in aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients before year’s end, putting a possible regulatory filing in play by 2017. The medication, part of a new class of genetically engineered antibody-based drugs, blocks proteins that prevent the immune system from destroying cancer cells.
Keytruda already has scored one very high-profile success – it’s one of the drugs taken by former President Jimmy Carter, 91, in his successful battle previous year against melanoma that had spread to his brain. AbbVie (ABBV), a global biopharmaceutical company, will present data from multiple clinical trials evaluating the company’s portfolio of approved and investigational oncology medicines during the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), June 3-7, in Chicago.
“I think it’s incredibly encouraging that we could potentially see a cure in melanoma, as evidenced by the response rate and the durability of the responses”.
The American Cancer Society estimates that nearly 77,000 people will be diagnosed with melanoma this year and that 10,000 will die from the disease. Caroline Robert, head of the dermatology unit at the Institut Gustave-Roussy in Paris, France. Researchers said three-year survival rates for older melanoma treatments were about 10% to 20%. “The data show durable responses in one third of patients, with complete durable responses that are visible after stopping treatment”. A third of patients had objective responses, and nearly three-fourths of the responses lasted at least 2 years.
“These are patients whose disease can not be surgically removed, can not be cured by surgery and usually the majority of these patients have disease that involved vital organs”, said Dr. Stephen Hodi, a melanoma specialist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who worked on the study.
Further, 95 patients went into complete remission after taking Keytruda, Robert said.
Researchers are hopeful that combining the two approaches, one that takes the brakes off of the immune system with one that hits the accelerator, will offer long-lasting protection against cancer without adding serious side effects. There are side-effects, including fatigue, itchiness and rash.
The Food and Drug Administration gave Keytruda accelerated approval for melanoma in 2014. “In a matter of a few years, these therapies have truly transformed the outlook for patients with melanoma and many other hard-to-treat cancers”.
Advertisement
In a separate study testing Keytruda against Yervoy in advanced melanoma, 55 percent of those who received the Merck drug were alive after two years versus 43 percent for Bristol’s Yervoy. Both Keytruda and Opdivo cost more than $12,500 a month for an average patient.
