These are astonishing stats .Key expected to earn 17 billion Advanced bladder and urinary tract cancer (urothelial carcinoma)
Keytruda was evaluated in a clinical study of patients with urothelial cancer who had previously received a platinum-based chemotherapy regimen (KEYNOTE-045). For the patients receiving Keytruda, the chemotherapy had either never worked or stopped working. Overall, patients receiving Keytruda lived longer than those receiving chemotherapy.
Patients were split into two groups of about 270 patients each. Each group was given either 200 mg of Keytruda every 3 weeks or chemotherapy every 3 weeks.
At evaluation, 43% of patients (115 / 270) were alive compared to 34% of patients (93 / 272) receiving chemotherapy. Patients receiving Keytruda lived for 10.3 months (median overall survival) compared to 7.4 months with chemotherapy.
An equal number of patients (81%) in both the Keytruda and chemotherapy groups had their cancer spread, grow, or get worse. Half of patients on chemotherapy were alive at 3.3 months without their cancer spreading, growing, or getting worse, compared to 2.1 months with Keytruda.
A greater number of patients receiving Keytruda had their bladder cancer tumors shrink (21%) compared to chemotherapy (11%).