on Tuesday scrapped a late-stage trial of a combination therapy with its cancer drug Keytruda as interim data showed it was unlikely to meet the main goals, making it the drugmaker's third trial for the disease to be abandoned.
The setbacks were likely to put Merck further behind in its quest to develop a treatment for advanced forms of the most common cancer type in the United States. It had in January stopped a late-stage study of the drug in some prostate cancer patients. Keytruda belongs to a class of drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors, which disables the programmed death 1, or PD-1, protein that helps tumors evade the immune system.
The decision did not come as a surprise as prostate cancers have historically not been responsive to this class of drugs, said Mara Goldstein, analyst at Mizuho Securities.
I’m on it for Kidney cancer and it’s working so far.