Real-World Time on Treatment with First-Line Pembrolizumab Monotherapy for Advanced NSCLC with PD-L1 Expression ≥ 50%: 3-Year Follow-Up Data.

Our aim was to evaluate real-world time on treatment (rwToT), overall and by mutation status, with first-line pembrolizumab monotherapy for advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in real-world oncology practice in the US. rwToT is a readily available, intermediate-range endpoint that is moderately to highly correlated with overall survival in clinical trials and real-world data. Using deidentified electronic medical record data, we studied patients with ECOG performance status (PS) of 0-2 who initiated pembrolizumab (1 November 2016 to 31 March 2020) for advanced NSCLC with programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression ≥ 50% and without genomic alterations. The data cutoff was 31 March 2021, and the median study follow-up was 34 months. The Kaplan-Meier median rwToT with first-line pembrolizumab monotherapy was 7.4 months (95% CI, 6.3-8.1) for 807 patients with PS 0-1, which was consistent with the median treatment duration in the KEYNOTE-024 trial (7.9 months). The median rwToT for 237 patients with PS 2 was 2.1 months (95% CI, 1.4-2.8). For those with -mutated and wild-type nonsquamous NSCLC and PS 0-1, the median rwToT was 7.6 months and 7.0 months, respectively. Our findings suggest long-term benefit of first-line pembrolizumab monotherapy for advanced NSCLC with PD-L1 expression ≥ 50% in real-world settings in the US, particularly for patients with good performance status at the start of therapy, irrespective of status.