First-line immune-chemotherapy combination: the right strategy to fight squamous non-small cell lung cancer?

In The New England Journal of Medicine, Paz-Ares and colleagues published the results of KEYNOTE-407, a randomized phase III placebo-controlled trial, investigating the addition of pembrolizumab or placebo to first-line carboplatin-taxane chemotherapy, in patients with advanced squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) (1). The study met its co-primary end-points, since immune-chemotherapy combination led to a significant longer overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) as compared to placebo combination.