Immunotherapy
Results from two studies on using the immunotherapy medicines Tecentriq or Keytruda along with chemotherapy to treat early-stage triple-negative breast cancer before surgery suggested that Keytruda offered benefits while Tecentriq did not.
Adding Tecentriq to chemotherapy before surgery for early-stage triple-negative breast cancer offered higher pathologic complete response rates than chemotherapy alone, no matter the PD-L1 status of the cancer.
On March 8, 2019, the FDA approved Tecentriq in combination with the chemotherapy medicine Abraxane to treat unresectable locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative, PD-L1-positive breast cancer.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Keytruda plus chemotherapy before surgery, followed by Keytruda alone after surgery to treat early-stage triple-negative breast cancer with a high risk of recurrence.
A very small, very early study hints that the immunotherapy medicine Keytruda may offer benefits for certain metastatic HER2-positive breast cancers.
On Nov. 13, 2020, the FDA approved the immunotherapy Keytruda in combination with chemotherapy to treat unresectable locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative, PD-L1-positive breast cancer.
Keytruda plus chemotherapy offered better progression-free survival than chemotherapy alone as the first treatment for metastatic triple-negative breast cancer or triple-negative breast cancer that has come back in the breast area but can't be removed with surgery, with high levels of the PD-L1 protein.
When treating locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer for the first time, adding Tecentriq to Taxol did not improve survival, while adding Tecentriq to Abraxane did improve survival.
Tecentriq, an immunotherapy medicine, combined with the targeted therapy Abraxane was better than Abraxane alone for people diagnosed with locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who had not been treated yet for advanced-stage disease.
Nearly all the people in a clinical trial who were receiving systemic intravenous cancer treatment had an adequate immune response to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
A new analysis of the IMpassion130 trial found that the immunotherapy Tecentriq (chemical name: atezolizumab) in combination with the chemotherapy Abraxane (chemical name: albumin-bound paclitaxel or nab-paclitaxel) only helps treat cancers that are PD-L1-positive.
Adding the immunotherapy medicine Keytruda to chemotherapy improved overall survival more than chemotherapy alone in people diagnosed with metastatic triple-negative, strongly PD-L1-positive breast cancer, according to the KEYNOTE-355 study’s final results.
On Aug. 27, 2021, Genentech announced it is voluntarily withdrawing the breast cancer indication from the immunotherapy medicine Tecentriq in the United States.
Six months after receiving their second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, people diagnosed with solid tumor cancers had about the same antibody levels as people who hadn’t been diagnosed with cancer.
The immunotherapy medicine Keytruda plus chemotherapy before surgery and Keytruda alone after surgery improved event-free survival better than chemotherapy alone in women diagnosed with early-stage triple-negative breast cancer.
The combination of the immunotherapy Keytruda and chemotherapy before surgery to remove early-stage, triple-negative breast cancer led to a better pathologic complete response than chemotherapy alone.