Pembrolizumab monotherapy in Japanese patients with advanced ovarian cancer: Subgroup analysis from the KEYNOTE‐100

Interim results from the two-cohort, phase 2 KEYNOTE-100 study (NCT02674061) of 376 patients with previously treated advanced recurrent ovarian cancer (ROC) showed that pembrolizumab monotherapy was associated with an objective response rate (ORR) of 8.0% (95% CI, 5.4-11.2). We present outcomes for the Japanese patients (n = 21) enrolled in KEYNOTE-100. Patients with epithelial ROC had received either 1-3 prior chemotherapy lines and had platinum-free interval or treatment-free interval (PFI; TFI) of 3-12 months (cohort A) or 4-6 prior chemotherapy lines and had PFI/TFI of ≥3 months (cohort B). All patients received pembrolizumab 200 mg every 3 weeks as monotherapy for 2 years or until progression, death, unacceptable toxicity or consent withdrawal. Primary objectives were ORR per RECIST v1.1 for each cohort and higher programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) tumor expression. The relationship between PD-L1 expression (measured as combined positive score [CPS]) and ORR was assessed. Twenty-one Japanese patients (cohort A, n = 19; cohort B, n = 2) were treated. The median (range) age was 57 (37-78) years; 19 (90.5%) patients had ECOG status of 0 and 16 (76.2%) patients had stage III-IV disease. ORR was 19.0% (95% CI, 5.4-41.9) and seemed to increase with increasing PD-L1 expression. A total of 13 (61.9%) patients had treatment-related adverse events (TRAE), and 5 (23.8%) had grade 3-4 TRAE. There were no treatment-related deaths in this subpopulation. Pembrolizumab monotherapy was associated with antitumor activity in Japanese patients with ROC, with no new safety signals identified in this subpopulation. The data suggested a trend toward higher PD-L1 expression among some patients with higher ORR.