Together, the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM) and St. Mary’s Hospital Center (SMHC) have contributed to an international clinical trial that will change the way we treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)—the most common form of lung cancer. In this trial, an immunotherapy drug called pembrolizumab (KEYTRUDA®), used in conjunction with neoadjuvant chemotherapy (i.e., given before surgery) and then again after surgery, has been shown to slow cancer progression and recurrence and to reduce the presence of residual tumours in patients with early-stage operable NSCLC. In the experimental group, three out of five patients remained stable for two years (without cancer progression or recurrence), compared with two out of five in the control group, an improvement of around 50 per cent.
The interim analysis of this randomized, double-blind, Phase III clinical trial was recently presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2023 Annual Meeting in Chicago and published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
