Keytruda

What is Keytruda (Keytruda®)?

Keytruda, pembrolizumab, is a prescription medicine, an innovative breakthrough drug, humanized monoclonal antibody. Keytruda belongs to the “immunotherapy” drugs that help the immune system attack the tumor. This contrasts, for example, with chemotherapy that directly affects tumor cells. Keytruda and immunotherapy is therapeutic strategy has revolutionized the treatment of cancer in recent years and is one of the most studied strategies in the world for many types of cancer and different stages of treatments.

What is Keytruda used for?

Keytruda is prescribed by an oncologist and is used to treat various types of cancer, for example: Advanced melanoma skin cancer when the disease has spread or cannot be removed by surgery. Advanced non small cell lung cancer, NSCLC, for patients with positive for PDL1 and not received chemotherapy and the tumor express EGFR or ALK gene/mutation. Other cases can be for patients who received platinum chemotherapy and it is no longer working and the patients tumor express EGFR or ALK gene/mutation. Other cases can be patients that also received an EGFR or ALK inhibitor medicine and it did not work any more. Advanced head and neck squamous cells cancer, HNSCC. if the disease has returned or spread and previous platinum chemotherapy  is no longer working. Hodgkin lymphoma, cHL, in adults and children if the disease has returned and if the patients received 3 or more types of treatment. Bladder and urinary tract cancer, urothelial carcinoma – for  metastatic disease or patients who can not receive cisplatin, or cases of a disease that progresses during chemotherapy treatment. Cancer types among adults and children that is shown by a laboratory test to be a microsatellite instability high (MSI-H), or a mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) solid tumor. Here there are a few points to consider, for example the cancer has spread or cannot be removed by surgery and there are no...