MRK Merck and Co Inc

By Peter Loftus 

A new study reinforces the potential of a new class of expensive immune-boosting drugs to prolong the lives of people with a deadly form of skin cancer.

An estimated 40% of 655 people who took Merck & Co.'s Keytruda in a clinical trial to treat advanced melanoma were still alive three years after starting treatment, the Merck-funded study shows, according to results released online by the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Researchers said three-year survival rates for older melanoma treatments were about 10% to 20%. The median overall survival among patients in the study was about two years. The study continues.

Keytruda and similar new "immunotherapy" drugs are designed to harness the immune system to destroy cancerous cells. For certain types of tumors, particularly melanoma, the new drugs have extended average patient survival beyond what older drugs could achieve.

In April, researchers said that about 34% of melanoma patients who took Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s Opdivo were still alive five years after starting treatment. In comparison, the average five-year survival rate for all patients with advanced melanoma has been about 15% to 20%, according to the American Cancer Society.

"Patients with advanced melanoma are often very reasonably scared about the diagnosis, based on reading old statistics about long-term survival probabilities," said Michael Postow, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York who wasn't involved in the new survival analysis but has been involved in other Keytruda studies. "All of these statistics are now being rewritten in a favorable way with these new drugs."

Keytruda is the drug that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said last year he received to treat melanoma that had spread to other parts of his body. In December, Mr. Carter said recent imaging scans had shown no signs of cancer. A spokeswoman for Mr. Carter's charitable organization, the Carter Center, didn't respond to requests for comment.

Use of the new immunotherapy drugs is expanding to treat other types of tumors such as lung cancer. On Wednesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new Roche Holding AG drug, Tecentriq, to treat bladder cancer. And on Tuesday, the FDA approved Bristol's Opdivo to treat Hodgkin lymphoma.

The benefits of the new immunotherapy drugs come with a price: Keytruda and Opdivo each cost more than $12,500 a month for the average patient. Roche said Tecentriq will cost about $12,500 a month per patient. Researchers still haven't determined how long patients should take the drugs.

Before 2011 -- when Bristol-Myers began selling the immunotherapy Yervoy -- patients with advanced melanoma had a median overall survival of less than one year, Dr. Caroline Robert, an oncologist at Gustave-Roussy Cancer Campus in France and co-author of the new Keytruda study, said on a conference call Wednesday hosted by ASCO. Results of the Keytruda study and other cancer trials will be presented in June at ASCO's annual meeting in Chicago.

About 8% of patients in the Keytruda study discontinued treatment due to drug-related side effects. The most common adverse events were fatigue, itchiness and skin rash, Dr. Robert said.

Some patients stopped taking Keytruda after their tumors disappeared and they continued to have no signs of cancer, Dr. Robert said.

Ron

Winslow

contributed to this article.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 18, 2016 17:14 ET (21:14 GMT)

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