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, said Wednesday she didn't have an update on his condition.

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 at 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.

Results of the Keytruda study and other cancer trials will be presented in June at ASCO's annual meeting in Chicago.

Ron Winslow contributed to this article.

Write to Peter Loftus at peter.loftus@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

An earlier version of this article was illustrated with a photograph of a logo that was not that of Merck & Co.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 18, 2016 22:12 ET (02:12 GMT)

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