Merck's New Drug Trial Fails! 441 Colorectal Cancer Patients Did Not See Survival Improvement, Keytruda Faces Major Setback

Merck on Wednesday formally reported that its experimental drug in combination with its lead treatment, Keytruda, did not work as expected in a late-stage clinical trial in patients with a class of colorectal cancer. The failure marks the latest setback in a series of combination clinical trials in which Keytruda is involved. Faced with the potential loss of patent protection for the drug in the next decade, Merck is working to expand its use in cancer types that immunotherapy has not yet touched.

In recent months, Merck has decided to terminate a clinical trial of Keytruda in a combination treatment for skin cancer and lung cancer. The colorectal cancer trial included 441 patients, but the results showed that patients who received the experimental drug favezelimab in combination with Keytruda did not see a significant improvement in overall survival compared with standard care.

According to statistics released by the National Institutes of Health, more than 150,000 new cases of colorectal cancer are diagnosed in the United States each year, and the disease primarily affects the colon or rectum region.

Favezelimab works by blocking the binding of a protein called LAG-3 to specific molecules on the surface of tumor cells, triggering an immune response that inhibits tumor growth. In addition, favezelimab in combination with Keytruda has been evaluated for therapeutic potential against a variety of blood disorders and solid tumors.