Pembrolizumab May Help Some Head and Neck Cancer Patients Live Longer
🧪 New Research: Pembrolizumab May Help Some Head and Neck Cancer Patients Live Longer 🧪
A major new study has looked at whether adding a drug called pembrolizumab to the usual treatment for head and neck cancer can help people live longer without the cancer coming back.
Here’s what happened in the study:
Over 700 people with locally advanced head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC) took part.
Everyone had surgery and radiation (sometimes with chemotherapy), which is the usual treatment.
Half of the people also got pembrolizumab before and after surgery. The other half did not.
What did they find?
✅ After 3 years, more people who had pembrolizumab were still free of cancer events (like recurrence, new growth, or death) compared to those who did not:
58% of people in the pembrolizumab group were event-free, compared to 46% in the standard treatment group.
Was it safe?
Serious side effects happened in about 45% of both groups.
Immune-related side effects from pembrolizumab happened in about 10% of people.
Very few people died from treatment in either group.
Why this matters:
This study shows that pembrolizumab, when added to regular treatment, might help certain head and neck cancer patients — especially those with specific tumour markers — live longer without cancer coming back.
We’ll keep following this research to see how it might affect treatment in New Zealand.
📌 Study: KEYNOTE-689, funded by Merck. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2415434
