Merck halts trial after Keytruda-Lynparza combo flunks PhIII study in lung cancer

Mer­ck is halt­ing a Phase III tri­al in non-small cell lung can­cer (NSCLC) af­ter its Keytru­da-Lyn­parza com­bo flunked one of the pri­ma­ry end­points in an in­ter­im da­ta analy­sis.

In the KEY­LYNK-008 tri­al, pa­tients first got Keytru­da (pem­brolizum­ab) and chemother­a­py, fol­lowed by Keytru­da and Lyn­parza as a first-line treat­ment. But the da­ta from the 857-pa­tient tri­al did not show an im­prove­ment in over­all sur­vival, one of the study’s pri­ma­ry end­points, com­pared to Keytru­da and chemo fol­lowed by Keytru­da plus a place­bo. The oth­er pri­ma­ry end­point, pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival, was al­so not sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant, though there was a “nu­mer­i­cal im­prove­ment” com­pared to the place­bo arm.

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