A Promising Treatment Combination

  • Data presented at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting show that combining sacituzumab govitecan [brand name: Todelvy], an antibody drug conjugate, with pembrolizumab [brand name: Keytruda] can help patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer live longer without their cancer progressing.
  • Study results from the ASCENT-04/KEYNOTE-D19 clinical trial show that a combination of sacituzumab govitecan and pembrolizumab led to a 35% lower risk of cancer progression when compared to the current standard of treatment.

The targeted drug called sacituzumab govitecan-hziy (brand name: Trodelvy) is showing promise for patients with triple-negative breast cancer when combined with immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab (brand name: Keytruda).

Results from a study called ASCENT-04/KEYNOTE-D19 show that the sacituzumab govitecan, pembrolizumab combination led to a 35% lower risk of cancer progressing compared to chemotherapy plus pembrolizumab (the current standard treatment) for patients with unresectable locally-advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer that expressed high levels of PD-L1

Medical oncologist Dr. Nancy Chan, the director of breast cancer clinical research at NYU Langone Perlmutter Cancer Center, describes the research as “practice-changing.”

“This is another practice-changing study in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer [for patients] who have a biomarker called the PD-L1 and a CPS score that is greater than 10. That means that these patients are predicted to benefit from immunotherapy,” Dr. Chan tells SurvivorNet Connect.

What Did The Data Show?

The antibody drug conjugate showed better results for these patients in the frontline setting, Dr. Chan explains.

The median follow-up time for patients was 14 months. Patients treated with sacituzumab govitecan and pembrolizumab had a progression-free survival of 11.2 months vs. 7.8 months in the chemotherapy and pembrolizumab arm.

This translates to a 35% lower risk of cancer progression in the sacituzumab govitecan and pembrolizumab group compared to the chemotherapy group.

The median duration of response was 16.5 months for the sacituzumab govitecan and pembrolizumab arm vs. 9.2 months for the chemotherapy arm.

“This study [was] a randomized study that demonstrated in the frontline setting that the sacituzumab govitecan-hziy plus immunotherapy with pembrolizumab significantly improved the progression-free survival. So, helping patients to live longer with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.”