On the spectrum.

The landmark KEYNOTE-024 trial established in 2016 that pembro monotherapy improves survival compared to the then-standard platinum doublet for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with PD-L1 expression of at least 50%. Here’s a retrospective study of 187 patients who, since then, have received pembro monotherapy for NSCLC without alterations in ALK or EGFR to evaluate if there's a reason to get excited with even higher PD-L1 expressions. As predicted, those with expression of ≥90% had almost double the objective response rate (33 → 60%) of those with 50-89% expression. What’s more they also had significantly longer progression-free survival (median of 4 → 15 months) and even overall survival (HR 0.4, median not reached). TBL: Degree of PD-L1 expression is a predictive biomarker in a continuous fashion. | Aguilar, Ann Oncol 2019