SAN DIEGO — For years, Merck’s drug Keytruda has dominated cancer immunotherapy, racking up dozens of approvals, extending the lives of patients, and bringing in billions of dollars to the pharma giant. But detailed data presented by Summit Therapeutics on Sunday demonstrated that the company’s experimental therapy has done what no other has done before: beat Keytruda in a head-to-head late-stage trial in lung cancer.
The Summit drug, an antibody called ivonescimab, reduced the risk of tumor progression by 49% compared to Keytruda, according to data released here at the World Conference on Lung Cancer. At the median, patients treated with ivonescimab went 11.1 months before their tumors began to grow again compared to 5.8 months for patients on Keytruda.
The Phase 3 study, called HARMONi-2, was conducted by Akeso, a Chinese company that invented ivonescimab and licensed it to Summit. Researchers enrolled nearly 400 patients with previously untreated, advanced non-small cell lung cancer.
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