Merck’s immunotherapy drug Keytruda can now be sold as a first-line therapy for certain metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients — an industry-first that once again shifts the balance of power in the anti-PD-L1 therapy duel.
The news reverberated throughout the biopharma field, largely due to the backstory of the immunotherapies. Keytruda has long been jostling for market share with Opdivo, a PD-L1 inhibitor from Bristol-Myers Squibb. Both were approved for use in patients with melanoma just weeks apart in 2014.
