The longer they watched, the stronger it got: a skin-cancer immunotherapy cuts the risk of death by 37%

Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma is a common skin cancer, and for people at high risk of it coming back, surgery and radiation are often not the end of the story. In the Phase 3 C-POST trial, 415 such patients received either Libtayo (cemiplimab) — an immunotherapy, a treatment that helps the immune system fight cancer — or a placebo for up to a year after their surgery and radiation. After a median follow-up of 44 months, nearly four years, patients who got Libtayo had a 37% lower risk of death than those on placebo, a benefit that has grown at every check-in, from 14% at two years. The treatment also kept patients free of the disease for longer, whether or not a sensitive blood test could still find traces of cancer at the start. The survival trend is all the more striking because 88% of placebo patients whose cancer returned were switched onto Libtayo — and the early-treatment group still came out ahead. Libtayo is already approved in the USA and Europe as the first immunotherapy for this exact use, and these longer-term results, presented at the ESMO cancer congress in Madrid, strengthen the case for using it early rather than waiting for the cancer to return.

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