Pharmaceutical company Merck announced on Tuesday that it has received positive results from Phase III trial of Keytruda drug. The company stated that the drug met its two primary endpoints in the study as first-line treatment for patients with melanoma.

In the trial, the company has included a total of 834 patients. The patients were given Keytruda 10mg/kg every three weeks, Keytruda 10mg/kg every two weeks, or four cycles of ipilimumab 3mg/kg every three weeks. According to the company, the patients who received Keytruda showed meaningful improvement in overall survival, compared with patients receiving Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s ipilmumab and Yervoy.

The company claimed that the safety profile of the drug was found similar to the safety profile that was previously reported in advanced melanoma. Merck further stated that Keytruda is the first drug to show a survival advantage compared to other drugs for the first-line treatment of advanced melanoma.

Dr. Roger Perlmutter, Merck Research Laboratories president, said that data from clinical program for Keytruda could provide help in defining the appropriate treatment of advanced melanoma. "We greatly appreciate the efforts of our investigators and their patients in this important study, and we look forward to the presentation of overall survival data from KEYNOTE-006 at the AACR annual meeting", Perlmutter added.

Keytruda will be helpful in blocking the interaction between PD-1 and its ligands, PD-L1 and PD-L2. The drug targets a protein named PD-1, a molecular brake that prevents the immune system from seeing tumors. Last September, it was the first anti-PD drug which was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration. Currently, Keytruda is approved for patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma and disease progression following ipilimumab.

According to Merck, it has planned to provide more details about the drug at an industry conference in April.