I'm having a hard time finding how much the patient Life is extended.
Merck's CEO has not performed well lately, I'm skeptical of the headlines. Big Pharma pulling a fast one over the Press / Public ??
They just PR'd the top line results, the hard data will be presented later (likely ASCO if they can slip it in this late). This is how it works, they need to save the red meat for the big show.
All we know is that OS was stat sig across all groups and they are stll waiting on PFS (the secondary endpoint).
The trial compared Keytruda alone to the SOC platinum based chemo (no chemo on the Keytruda arm). It included about 75% of the population that express some PD-L1 on the cancer. So it is a major result.
Results are a bit young (trial only started in late 2014), so we will not see the full tail. But with sig early separation, and the known tendency of immunos to do better late, that tail will very likely be quite impressive when we see the long term follow up in a year or two.