Power Alley: Merck Scored A Pair Of New Wins For Keytruda®, In Hard To Treat Breast Cancers...

So. . . this is very good news, after Merck saw some trial results, at competitors that might narrow its lead in other cancers, in about three years (results posted about ten days ago, now on that one). But as I say, that is at least three years off -- and thus, this falls into the "overall immaterial" category. These puts and takes mostly cancel each other out, as the win in triple negative breast cancer is. . . for a fairly rare condition -- only about 13 women out of each 100,000 in the US will get it.

Still net good news -- as those women will now see longer lives, from combo therapies that beat Tecentriq^®. As ever, Fierce Pharma has done an excellent job capturing all the nuance (so I don't have to!) -- do go read it all:

. . .In the current analysis, Keytruda’s EFS benefit remained strong, with the drug showing a 35% improvement over neoadjuvant chemo alone. The five-year EFS rate was 81.2% for Keytruda and 72.2% for control.

“We had thought that breast cancer may not be sensitive to immunotherapy alone but giving it in combination with chemotherapy before surgery and then further afterwards improves overall survival in many patients,” Alessandra Curioni-Fontecedro, M.D., director of oncology at the Hospital of Fribourg in Switzerland, said in an ESMO-facilitated statement. “The finding suggests the possibility that the combination of treatments might lead to a sensitization of TNBC to immunotherapy.”

Keytruda’s KEYNOTE-522 win sets it apart from Roche’s PD-L1 inhibitor Tecentriq. Last year, following an interim analysis, Roche discontinued the phase 3 IMpassion030 trial, which was testing Tecentriq in combination with chemo as a postsurgical adjuvant therapy in TNBC. Data later revealed that the risk of recurrence or death appeared to be even higher for Tecentriq-chemo versus adjuvant chemo alone. . . .

Now you know -- and the Rocky Mountain Showdown trophy will stay in Boulder now until 2029, the next time these two meet (each having switched conferences in the off season). And the Buffs have held it for seven straight years, looking back. Grinning -- sorry Habierto!

[And a house-keeping note: I'll be off-grid for about ten days later this week, up at a remote cabin high above Lake Tahoe, on the mountain -- with my grown wonderful kids. . . so blogging will be sparse starting this Friday.] Onward -- be excellent to one another!

नमस्ते