Triplet Therapy for Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer

To determine whether adding a third agent to first-line platinum-doublet chemotherapy would improve outcomes in patients with advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), investigators conducted a phase II cohort study of the prior industry-funded, international, randomized KEYNOTE-021 trial involving 123 chemotherapy-naive patients who had metastatic non-squamous NSCLC without an EGFR mutation or ALK translocation. Patients received carboplatin and pemetrexed chemotherapy with or without the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab.

Triplet therapy with pembrolizumab versus doublet chemotherapy improved the overall response rate (ORR; the primary endpoint; 55% vs. 29%) and shortened the median time to response (1.5 vs. 2.7 months). Higher PD-L1 immunoh…