Posted by Michael Wonder on 22 Feb 2018
New insights on PHARMAC's tardiness in funding Keytruda for patients with NSCLC
21 February 2018 - The minutes from the November 2017 PTAC meeting note further information from MSD, submitted in response to the May 2017 PTAC minutes, regarding the use of pembrolizumab as a first-line treatment of patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer whose tumours express PD-L1 at a level of greater than or equal to 50%.
The Committee noted that MSD described ad hoc analysis in relation to an ASCO August 2017 meeting for overall survival and provision of a draft paper about longer-term overall survival from the KEYNOTE-024 trial.The Committee indicated a preference for its advice to be based on the peer-reviewed pre-specified database-lock-related analysis in terms of magnitude and confidence intervals for estimates of survival differences.
The Committee noted its advice regarding the use of pembrolizumab in this setting could also be better refined with publication of associated quality of life analyses.
