By Siddhi Mahatole
May 21 (Reuters) – Sichuan Kelun-Biotech Biopharmaceutical said on Thursday its experimental treatment combined with partner Merck’s Keytruda improved progression-free survival in patients with advanced lung cancer, meeting the main goal of a late-stage study.
Shares of Merck rose nearly 4% in after-hours trading.
The trial tested the drug, sacituzumab tirumotecan or sac-TMT, in combination with cancer therapy Keytruda as a first-line treatment for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer, against Keytruda alone.
The combination significantly improved progression-free survival, reducing the risk of disease progression or death by about 65%, the company said.
The study had enrolled more than 400 previously untreated patients in China with advanced disease and PD-L1 expression, a marker that helps determine response to immunotherapy.
The treatment also showed higher response rates of about 70.2%, compared with 42% for Keytruda alone.
The data for overall survival in patients was not mature but a favorable trend was observed in those who were treated with the combination drug, the company said.
Merck is developing sac-TMT with Chinese biotech firm Kelun-Biotech, which discovered the therapy, which is currently being tested across multiple cancers, including lung, breast and gastrointestinal tumors.
Sac-TMT is an antibody-drug conjugate, a type of targeted therapy that delivers cancer-killing chemotherapy directly to tumor cells by binding to a protein called TROP2.
Safety remained consistent with the known profiles of the drugs, although serious side effects were more common in the combination group, including low white blood cell counts and anemia, the company said.
NSCLC is the most common type of lung cancer in the United States, accounting for about 87% of all cases, according to the American Cancer Society.
(Reporting by Siddhi Mahatole in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
