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ESMO: BMS’s Opdivo Edges Merck & Co’s Keytruda In First-Line Advanced Gastroesophageal Cancers

Competition Will Be Fierce Between Checkpoint Inhibitors

 
• By Alexandra Shimmings

A new frontier for IO therapies in gastric/gastroesophageal cancers is opening up on positive data for two leading checkpoint inhibitors in first-line advanced disease where BMS’s Opdivo looks likely to have an advantage over Merck & Co’s Keytruda.   

Human antibody
IO Therapy In First-Line Gastric Cancer • Source: Shutterstock

Two checkpoint inhibitors, Bristol Myers Squibb Company/Ono Pharmaceutical Company, Ltd.’s Opdivo and Merck & Co., Inc.’s best-selling Keytruda, have shown efficacy in the first-line treatment of advanced gastroesophageal cancers, a new patient tranche, in Phase III trials recently presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology virtual meeting

Data from the two studies – Opdivo’s CheckMate-649 and Keytruda’s KEYNOTE-590 – suggest the anti-PD1s have similar levels of efficacy but CheckMate-649 showed a benefit in patients with a broader range of PD-L1 expression profiles that should allow

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