Merck, Seagen drug cocktail seen as new bladder cancer standard

The Merck-Seagen cocktail combines immune therapy Keytruda with a new type of medicine called an antibody drug conjugate (Representative Image)

Merck & Co. and Seagen Inc.’s drug cocktail is set to replace chemotherapy as a first choice for bladder cancer patients, doctors said, the first alternative to the toxic treatment in 30 years.

The Merck-Seagen combination helped patients nearly live twice as long — an average of 31.5 months — as those that got chemotherapy alone, in a large study presented on Sunday at the European Society for Medical Oncology’s annual meeting. The results appeared alongside a Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. combination of immune therapy Opdivo and chemotherapy, which also boosted survival more than chemotherapy alone — but not as much as the chemo-free regimen.

The chemo-free results are “very impressive,” said Andrea Apolo, chief of the Bladder Cancer Section in the Genitourinary Malignancies Branch at the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Cancer Research, who reviewed the results and wasn’t involved in the study. “I think it will become the standard of care for bladder cancer.”

The Merck-Seagen cocktail combines immune therapy Keytruda with a new type of medicine called an antibody drug conjugate, designed to zap cell-killing therapy just to the parts of the body that need it the most, helping to mitigate some of the side effects of treatment. The technology is 200 times more powerful than traditional chemotherapy, Apolo said.

Pfizer Inc. agreed to buy Seagen for $43 billion earlier this year on the strength of its portfolio of antibody-drug conjugates.