ASCO: Merck’s Zilo-V Shows Activity, But Numbers Still Small

The drug boosted overall responses on top of the R-GemOx backbone, but the discussant pointed out that patients in waveLINE-003 were not very heavily pretreated.

ASCO 2025 Meeting
ASCO 2025 Meeting (Alaric DeArment)

Merck & Co.’s initial Phase II/III waveLINE-003 data for zilovertamab vedotin (zilo-V) in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago raised some questions from the presentation’s discussant about the small number of patients treated to date and the fact that they were not very heavily pretreated.

Key Takeaways
  • Data from Merck’s Phase II/III study of zilo-V in DLBCL presented at ASCO showed improvements in overall response and complete response rates when added to rituximab, gemcitabine and oxaliplatin (R-GemOx).

The data presented on 30 May were from the first part of a two-part trial that compared zilo-V combined with...

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