Most non-small cell lung cancer patients treated with Keytruda® survive four or more years
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CANCER DIGEST – April 11, 2026 – Most patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer treated with pembrolizumab were alive two years after discontinuing treatment without needing additional treatment, a new analysis has found.
The researchers led by Adrien Rousseau, MD of the Department of Thoracic Cancers at the Paris-Saclay University in France wanted to analyze the outcomes for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) two years after discontinuing the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda®). The results were published in the April 9, 2026 JAMA Oncology.
Using the French National Health Insurance database (SNDS), the researchers looked that outcomes of 41,498 patients who had received pembrolizumab for advanced NSCLC as initial treatment between January 2015 and December 2022. Of those, 5,293 had completed two years of immunotherapy, and had stopped treatment. For this study the researchers analyzed outcomes of 1480 who had been followed for at least six months after discontinuation of treatment.
After a median follow-up of 16 months after discontinuation of immunotherapy, they found that among the 1,480 patients with advanced NSCLC, 76.9 percent continued to survive 48 months after discontinuation of immunotherapy with no further treatment, while 387 patients (26.1 percent) underwent additional therapy usually chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Only 19 patients received additional immunotherapy. After an additional 12 months of retreatment the overall survival was 87 percent for those who received radiotherapy, 69.9 percent for chemotherapy and 61.4 percent for immunotherapy.
The results suggest NSCLC patients treated for two years with Keytruda have a high chance of survival with no further need of additional immunotherapy.
Source: April 9, 2026 JAMA Oncology
