Merck Drug Found to Extend Lives of Brain-Cancer Patients (1)

Patients with the same aggressive brain cancer that killed U.S. Senator John McCain saw survival time double after being treated with Merck & Co.’s blockbuster immunotherapy drug Keytruda before surgery to remove a tumor.

Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles seeking new treatments for the cancer, called recurrent glioblastoma, found that patients who were treated with Keytruda before the removal of a brain tumor survived an average of 417 days -- nearly double the historic average for the deadly disease.

The results are the first findings to suggest that a class of cancer treatments called checkpoint inhibitors, ...