The Role of Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in Treating Non-small Cell Lung Cancer

Lung cancer also cause causes most of the cancer death cases around the world. In 2020, 1,796,144 people from all the world were estimated to die because of it. Lung cancer is responsible for one-fourth of all cancer death cases. There are many risk factors for lung cancer, including air pollution and cigarettes. Genes also play an important role in the pathogenesis of lung cancer. There are many types of treatment for it nowadays and they are used in different stages or different combinations. Treatment of NSCLC is influenced by the patient's overall health status, tumor stage, and pathological type. However, most of them have lots of side effects, such as bone marrow suppression, liver and kidney damage, etc. Compared to those treatments, immune checkpoint inhibitors less side effects. Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) is one of the inhibitors, which has a good performance in treating the NSCLC. Pembrolizumab inhibits the binding of PD-1 to PD-L1 and has shown good results in many clinical experiments. However, it also has limitations. As a result, this paper will introduce non-small cell lung cancer, Pembrolizumab (Keytruda), and its function in treating this disease.