A skin win.

This week the FDA approved pembrolizumab as the second PD-1 inhibitor on the market for the systemic treatment of advanced cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) deemed incurable by surgery and /or radiation alone. This comes nearly two years after cemiplimab garnered headlines for the same success. This approval is thanks to early reporting of KEYNOTE-629, a single-arm multi-institutional study that demonstrated an objective response rate of 34% with the use of standard pembro dosing of 200 mg IV q3 weeks until progression. While this isn’t quite as good as that reported with cemiplimab (50%), at least physicians are already familiar with the side effects. TBL: Pembro is now the second PD-1 inhibitor FDA-approved for the treatment of advanced cutaneous SCC. | FDA 2020