In a phase III clinical trial from the University of London, researchers found that the immunotherapy drug called pembrolizumab could significantly reduce disease recurrence in patients with the most aggressive breast cancer.
The trial, named KEYNOTE-522, is the first phase III trial to demonstrate the benefit of adding immunotherapy to chemotherapy before patients receive surgery to remove their tumor.
Patients with early triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), where the disease had not yet spread beyond the breast and lymph nodes (stage II and III), were treated with pembrolizumab in addition to standard chemotherapy prior to surgery, followed by pembrolizumab after surgery.
In the current phase III trial, the researchers found that 3 years after the trial began, the risk of the disease recurrence was 37% lower in patients treated with pembrolizumab in combination with chemotherapy than in patients treated with chemotherapy alone.
The findings suggest that the addition of pembrolizumab to preoperative standard chemotherapy can prevent breast cancer recurrence and result in higher long-term cure rates.
As Professor Peter Schmid says, a previous study shows that the addition of immunotherapy to preoperative chemotherapy increases the treatment response in patients with triple-negative breast cancer at the time of surgery.
The current study reveals that the combination therapy significantly reduces recurrences by approximately 37%, including reduction of secondary breast cancer by 39%.
This means that the cure rate for these cancers is significantly increased.
It is estimated that, just in the US where this treatment was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration, this new treatment may save as many as 10,000 lives per year.
The study was conducted by Peter Schmid et al., and published in New England Journal of Medicine.
