A New Standard of Care for Squamous Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer

Treating patients with squamous cell non–small-cell lung cancer (SC NSCLC) has been challenging due to the lack of actionable mutations and, therefore, has been limited to platinum-based chemotherapy or the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab alone in those with high PD-L1 expression.

To test the utility of combining platinum-based chemotherapy with pembrolizumab in this setting, investigators conducted an industry-funded, international, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, phase III trial (KEYNOTE-407) involving 559 patients with untreated metastatic SC NSCLC. Patients received carboplatin and paclitaxel or nab-paclitaxel plus either pembrolizumab or placebo for 4 cycles and then continued to receive pembrolizumab or placebo for up to 35 …