New Drug Pembrolizumab Shows Durable Responses in Patients with Melanoma

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A new drug has shown promise in treating patients with metastatic melanoma, giving hope to thousands with the disease.

“Long-term data from the KEYNOTE-001 study showed that the anti–programmed death 1 (PD-1) antibody pembrolizumab produces durable responses in metastatic melanoma patients. These results were presented at the 2015 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting held May 29 to June 2 in Chicago.

Pembrolizumab is approved as a second-line therapy for metastatic melanoma following treatment with either ipilimumab or, for patients with BRAF-mutated tumors, an oral BRAF inhibitor at a dose of 2 mg/kg every 3 weeks. Thus far, more than 2,000 melanoma patients have been evaluated in clinical trials with pembrolizumab.“

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