
or some patients who are newly diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer, the combination of a treatment that helps the immune system to fight cancer—an immunotherapy—and chemotherapy may help them to live longer than chemotherapy alone, according to the results of a large clinical trial.
In the trial, patients with metastatic nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received the drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus chemotherapy had improved overall survivaland progression-free survival compared with patients who received chemotherapy alone.
After a median follow up of 10.5 months, patients who received pembrolizumab were 51% less likely to dieExit Disclaimer than patients who received chemotherapy alone. After 12 months, an estimated 69.2% of patients in the pembrolizumab–chemotherapy combination group, but only 49.4% of those in the chemotherapy group, were still alive.
Pembrolizumab is one of a class of immunotherapy drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors.
Source: NCI







