More time before the cancer moves again: an immune drug slows advanced breast cancer in a major trial

In the final readout of a large international trial, adding the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab to chemotherapy helped patients with an advanced, hormone-driven form of breast cancer keep the disease in check for longer. Among 342 patients whose cancer had already grown despite hormone therapy, the combination cut the risk of the cancer progressing — or of death — by 26 percent compared with chemotherapy alone. The clearest gain showed over time: two years in, 15 percent of patients on the combination were still free of progression, versus 4 percent on chemotherapy alone, and the benefit was strongest in tumours with higher levels of a marker called PD-L1. The study, published in Annals of Oncology, found no significant difference in overall survival so far — the many later treatments patients went on to receive may blur that picture — and side effects were somewhat more common with the combination, though no new safety problems appeared. For people living scan to scan with metastatic disease, extra time without the cancer advancing is time that matters.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation