BERLIN — At a primetime session on Saturday at a major cancer conference here, researchers reported such dramatic benefits of a bladder cancer treatment — driven in part by Merck’s Keytruda — that the audience of doctors and scientists burst into impromptu applause mid-presentation.
At a different session the following day, another Merck drug, this one an experimental antibody-drug conjugate, a type of next-generation chemotherapy, got the attention. Investigators detailed how the ADC improved outcomes in a type of lung cancer in a study run in China. It was one of several presentations on ADCs — a booming area in oncology — that Merck had at the European Society for Medical Oncology’s annual conference.
In that way, this year’s ESMO meeting was a tale of Merck both old and new, with a spotlight on an aging franchise that continues to show benefits in new cancers, and on a key component of the company’s strategy to strike gold — for patients and its bottom line — once again.
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