(Reuters) – Merck & Co Inc said on Wednesday its cancer therapy Keytruda failed to meet the main goal of a late-stage trial testing it in patients with head and neck cancer.
The company said Keytruda, its blockbuster cancer drug, in combination with chemoraditation therapy showed improvement in event-free survival, or the period of time a patient remains free of complications compared to a placebo.
However, the results did not meet statistical significance.
Keytruda showed a safety profile similar to previously reported studies, according to Merck.
The drug belongs to a class of treatments called PD-1 inhibitors, which work by boosting the immune system’s ability to fight cancer cells.
(Reporting by Manas Mishra and Amruta Khandekar in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)