Pembrolizumab and Lenvatinib Approval Opens New Door in Endometrial Cancer Treatment

Wesley Burkett, MD, a fellow in gynecologic oncology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, discusses his excitement for the approval of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in combination with lenvatinib (Lenvima) for patients with advanced endometrial carcinoma that is not microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) or mismatch repair deficient (dMMR).

The FDA approved this combination for patients who had disease progression after systemic therapy in any setting and were not candidates for curative surgery or radiation based on the results of the KEYNOTE-775/Study 309 trial (NCT03517449). Results from this study showed a 5-year survival rate of approximately 17% in patients with advanced endometrial cancer who have distant metastases.

Moreover, the median progression-free survival for these patients on the combination therapy was 6.6 months (95% CI: 5.6, 7.4) compared with 3.8 months (95% CI: 3.6, 5.0) for patients on investigator’s choice chemotherapy (HR 0.60; 95% CI: 0.50, 0.72; P = .0001). Survival results also benefitted the combination arm with a median overall survival at 17.4 months (95% CI: 14.2, 19.9) vs 12 months (95% CI: 10.8, 13.3) in the control arm (HR 0.68; 95% CI: 0.56, 0.84; P =0001) and a median duration response at 9.2 months vs 5.7 months, respectively.

Burkett discusses why these results excite him for patients with endometrial cancer, and how he thinks this combination can lead to other treatments like it in the future.

Transcript:

0:07 | Yeah, I think it's been very exciting because we hadn't had many very effective treatments for [patients with] recurrent endometrial cancer, especially after platinum therapy. So this gives us another option that actually is more efficacious than what we've previously have used.

0:33 | Patients are, when they come in, they're interested in hearing more about these targeted therapies, and it just gives us another treatment regimen that we can use. I think it's kind of what we've been talking about recently, [how] it's just a nice opening to many different types of treatments that hopefully will be coming down the line.