Dr. Zhu Discusses Findings of the KEYNOTE-224 in HCC

Andrew Zhu, MD, PhD, director, Liver Cancer Research, Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the findings of KEYNOTE-224 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

KEYNOTE-224 evaluated pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in patients with advanced HCC who had been previously treated with sorafenib (Nexavar). Treatment with the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab elicited promising progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) results, according to phase II evidence presented at the 2018 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

Of 105 patients enrolled in the single-arm, open-label phase II KEYNOTE-224 study, the objective response rate with pembrolizumab was 16.3% (95% CI, 9.8%-24.9%), with 1 complete response (CR). The median PFS was 4.8 months (95% CI, 3.4-6.6) and the median OS has not been reached at the time of data presentation, although the OS at 6 months was 77.9%.