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Efficacy and Safety of Pembrolizumab or Pembrolizumab Plus Chemotherapy vs Chemotherapy Alone for Patients With First-line, Advanced Gastric Cancer: The KEYNOTE-062 Phase 3 Randomized Clinical Trial

K. Shitara, E. Van Cutsem, Y. Bang, C. Fuchs, L. Wyrwicz, Keun-Wook Lee, I. Kudaba, M. Garrido et al.

JAMA Oncology, 2020

763 participants · 1,033 citations

Abstract

Importance

Safe and effective therapies for untreated, advanced gastric/gastroesophageal junction (G/GEJ) cancer remain an unmet need.

Objective

To evaluate the antitumor activity of pembrolizumab, pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy, or chemotherapy alone in patients with untreated, advanced G/GEJ cancer with programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) combined positive score (CPS) of 1 or greater.

Design, Setting, and Participants

The phase 3 KEYNOTE-062 randomized, controlled, partially blinded interventional trial enrolled 763 patients with untreated, locally advanced/unresectable or metastatic G/GEJ cancer with PD-L1 CPS of 1 or greater from 200 centers in 29 countries between September 18, 2015, and May 26, 2017.

Interventions

Patients were randomized 1:1:1 to pembrolizumab 200 mg, pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy (cisplatin 80 mg/m2/d on day 1 plus fluorouracil 800 mg/m2/d on days 1 to 5 or capecitabine 1000 mg/m2 twice daily), or chemotherapy plus placebo, every 3 weeks.

Main Outcomes and Measures

Primary end points were overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with PD-L1 CPS of 1 or greater or 10 or greater.

Results

A total of 763 patients were randomized to pembrolizumab (n = 256), pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy (n = 257), or chemotherapy (n = 250). The median (range) age of all patients in the study cohort was 62 (20-87) years; 554 of 763 (72.6%) were men. At final analysis, after a median (range) follow-up of 29.4 (22.0-41.3) months,…

How strong is the evidence?

Evidence Hub reads this as a randomized trial, done in people. Its evidence level is 2 of 5 (High · randomized trial). Randomized trials of a reasonable size are the strongest single-study design. Reported size: 763 participants or records.

How the five levels of evidence work. The level is assigned automatically from the abstract and can be wrong, so check the paper.

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