Pembrolizumab Plus Chemotherapy for Advanced Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Without Tumor Pd-L1 Expression in Asia

Aim: We pooled patient-level data from three randomized controlled studies to evaluate the combination of pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy in patients with untreated advanced/metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) tumor proportion score <1% in East Asia. Methods: The analysis included 107 patients from China, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Taiwan (pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy, n = 56; chemotherapy alone, n = 51). Results: For pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy versus chemotherapy alone, median overall survival was 21.3 versus 12.6 months (HR, 0.55 [95% CI: 0.35-0.87]) and median progression-free survival was 8.4 versus 6.0 months (HR, 0.64 [95% CI: 0.43-0.96]). Conclusion: The analysis supports the use of pembrolizumab in combination with platinum-based chemotherapy for East Asian patients with PD-L1-negative, advanced NSCLC.