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Keytruda: How PD-1 inhibition rewrote lung cancer care
Keytruda (pembrolizumab) is a PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor made by Merck. The US FDA approved it in 2014 as the first PD-1 drug of its kind. The real shift came in 2016, when a trial limited to patients whose tumors expressed PD-L1 at 50 percent or higher showed the drug more than doubled progression-free survival over chemotherapy. By screening for the patients most likely to respond, it became the leading immunotherapy for lung cancer. Most cancer drugs have a quiet backstory behind the headlines. Keytruda is now one of the most prescribed cancer medicines on the planet, but plenty of people only know it as the K drug, or as…
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Niclosamide in Cancer Immunotherapy: Breaking Through Tumor Immune Evasion
Cancer researchers have spent decades staring at the same problem: the immune system can find cancer cells, but tumors keep slipping away. Why? A lot of it comes down to the tumor microenvironment—the neighborhood around a tumor where cancer cells essentially run a protection racket. Research from Carnegie Mellon University, published in Frontiers in Immunology in March 2026, suggests an old drug might help. Niclosamide has been around since the 1960s as a treatment for tapeworm infections. Now researchers are asking whether it could work against cancer too. What’s Going Wrong in the Tumor Microenvironment The area around a tumor isn’t just empty space. It’s full of activity, and cancer…
