Recently, the Food and Drug Administration approved Keytruda (Pembrolizumab) - an immunotherapy drug that helps the immune system to fight cancer cells - combined with adjuvant chemotherapy, for the treatment of patients with non-small cell lung cancer whose tumors were completely resected.

The approval refers to early stage non-small cell lung cancer patients who did not receive any treatment except for tumor resection.

It should be noted that until now Keytruda was approved only as neoadjuvant treatment (before surgery), or as treatment for advanced (unresectable) disease.

The approval is supported by results from a clinical trial in which 1,177 patients who met the abovementioned criteria were enrolled.

Patients were randomly assigned to receive either Keytruda, with or without adjuvant chemotherapy (study group), or placebo, with or without adjuvant chemotherapy (control group).

At about five years follow-up, the probability of disease recurrence was significantly lower for patients receiving Keytruda, compared to those receiving placebo.

Side effects were generally similar to those observed in other trials of Keytruda.

The researchers believe that Keytruda following complete tumor resection in early stage non-small cell lung cancer patients - as an adjuvant treatment, is an important milestone in the efforts to achieve complete recovery for those patients.