Pembrolizumab With Chemoradiotherapy for Cervical Cancer

Dr Maurie Markman discusses a recent FDA approval for locally advanced cervical cancer.
www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...
-- TRANSCRIPT --
Hello. I'm Dr Maurie Markman from City of Hope, and I want to briefly mention a very important and exciting new approval by the FDA of the drug in the treatment of cervical cancer that is now, or at least should become, the standard of care. This was the FDA approval of the checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab with chemoradiation in patients who have FIGO 2014 stage III and IVA cervical cancer.
The approval here was based on a study that was conducted by the manufacturer. It was a phase 2 randomized trial known as KEYNOTE-A18, where patients who were eligible for chemoradiation received the standard chemoradiation, which of course includes standard radiation plus cisplatin as a chemosensitizer with or without the pembrolizumab. It included patients with stage IB, II, IIB, III, and IV.
The bottom line here is that there wasn't an improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) that was demonstrated for stage IB, II, or IIB, but there was a statistically significant, major improvement in PFS in the population with stage III and stage IV, so that is where the approval is. It's the more locally advanced disease where there is now an improvement in PFS.
There is FDA approval, and this, obviously, should become a routine part of the therapeutic armamentarium of women with locally advanced cervical cancer. These are very important study results and a very important approval by the FDA.
I encourage you, if you're involved in this area, to certainly read about the approval and the study on which it was based. I thank you for your attention.
Transcript in its entirety can be found by clicking here: www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...