Merck (NYSE:MRK), a United States-based pharmaceutical company, yesterday announced that the pivotal Phase 3 KEYNOTE-407 trial investigating KEYTRUDA (pembrolizumab), Merck's anti-PD-1 therapy, in combination with carboplatin-paclitaxel or nab-paclitaxel as first line treatment for metastatic squamous non-small cell lung cancer (sNSCLC) met a pre-specified secondary endpoint of overall response rate (ORR) in an early cohort of participants at an interim analysis.

Based on these data, Merck has recently submitted a supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

This study has been accepted for oral presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2018 Annual Meeting. The company now expects that an additional interim analysis will be conducted prior to ASCO and additional data may be available for the ASCO 2018 Annual Meeting.

KEYNOTE-407 (ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT 02775435) is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, Phase 3 study, investigating KEYTRUDA in combination with carboplatin-paclitaxel or nab-paclitaxel, compared with carboplatin-paclitaxel or nab-paclitaxel alone, in 560 untreated patients with metastatic squamous NSCLC.