MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Bishal Gyawali, MD, PhD Department of Medicine Brigham and Women's Hospital MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: PD-1 inhibitors are an interesting class of cancer drugs with atypical response patterns in clinical trials. There is a lot of debate over cancer drugs that improve progression-free survival (PFS) – a surrogate measure of clinical benefit– without affecting patients’ overall survival (OS), but in some studies, PD-1 inhibitors appears to improve overall survival (OS) without affecting PFS. We therefore conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials of PD-1 inhibitors (nivolumab and pembrolizumab) to assess the effect of these drugs on OS versus PFS. We showed that PD-1 inhibitors do appear to improve OS more than PFS.  (more…)