Merck Announces positive results from Phase 3 trial of KEYTRUDA® (pembrolizumab) combined with chemotherapy in gastric cancer

Merck announced positive results from the Phase 3 KEYNOTE-859 trial investigating KEYTRUDA® (pembrolizumab), Merck’s anti-PD-1 therapy, in combination with chemotherapy for the first-line treatment of patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative locally advanced unresectable or metastatic gastric or GEJ adenocarcinoma. Merck reported that the treatment showed significant and clinically meaningful improvement in the trial’s primary endpoint of overall survival (OS), and that significant and clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) and overall response rate (ORR) were also observed.  Keytruda is already approved by the FDA and elsewhere for other gastric and GEJ tumours.