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Keytruda: How Merck's Pembrolizumab Became the Best-Selling Cancer Drug of All Time
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Keytruda is Merck's $31 billion a year PD-1 inhibitor and the best-selling cancer drug of all time. In Episode 3 of Approved , Alex Kesin and Matthew Pech trace the development of pembrolizumab , featuring interviews the scientists who drove the program forward : co-inventors Gregory Carven and Michel Streuli , and former Merck oncology CMO Roy Baynes . Topics include preclinical PD1 / CTLA-4 checkpoint biology that brought industry attention to the target (Jim Allison's CTLA-4 work and Tasuku Honjo's PD-1 discovery); how pembro started as a failed rheumatoid arthritis antibody program at a Dutch subsidiary of a paint company; the two mega-mergers that nearly killed the program; the…