Dr. Raez on the Clinical Implications of the KEYNOTE-024 Trial in NSCLC

Luis E. Raez, MD, FACP, FCCP, hematology and oncology, Medical Director, Chief Scientific Officer, Memorial Cancer Institute, Memorial Healthcare System, discusses the clinical implications of the phase 3 KEYNOTE-024 trial (NCT02142738) in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

The KEYNOTE-024 trial evaluated pembrolizumab (Keytruda) vs platinum-based chemotherapy regimens in patients with metastatic NSCLC. Now, 5-year survival have emerged, demonstrating clinically meaningful long-term overall survival benefit with the checkpoint inhibitor compared with chemotherapy, Raez says. This is important because less than 5% of this patient population could be cured only 20 years ago, but the 5-year survival data from KEYNOTE-024 showthe number has drastically increased. However, the utility of pembrolizumab in patients with metastatic NSCLC is dependent on PD-L1 expression, Raez explains.

The data are significant and some patients who received pembrolizumab remain in treatment-free remissions, Raez concludes.