# KEYNOTE-062: pembrolizumab or pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy versus chemotherapy in PD-L1-positive advanced gastric cancer

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-keynote-062-shitara-jama-oncol-2020/  
OnCo record `paper-keynote-062-shitara-jama-oncol-2020` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

In first-line PD-L1-positive gastric cancer, pembrolizumab alone was no worse than chemotherapy for survival but did not beat it, and adding it to chemotherapy did not help either; the exception was microsatellite-unstable tumours, which did dramatically better with pembrolizumab.

## Summary

Phase 3 trial of 763 patients with untreated advanced gastric or junctional adenocarcinoma with PD-L1 combined positive score of 1 or more randomised to pembrolizumab, pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy, or chemotherapy.

Pembrolizumab was non-inferior to chemotherapy for overall survival (10.6 versus 11.1 months) and combination therapy was not superior; in the 50 patients with microsatellite instability-high tumours, median overall survival was not reached with pembrolizumab against 8.5 months with chemotherapy.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-17
- Journal: JAMA Oncology
- Year: 2020
- DOI: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2020.3370
- Authors: Shitara K, Van Cutsem E, Bang YJ, et al.
- Findings: Pembrolizumab non-inferior to chemotherapy overall (10.6 vs 11.1 months).; Microsatellite instability-high: overall survival not reached vs 8.5 months with chemotherapy.
- What it means: Single-agent pembrolizumab is an option for microsatellite-unstable gastric cancer first line, whereas for the broader PD-L1-positive population chemo-immunotherapy from CheckMate 649 and KEYNOTE-859 became standard.
- Caveats: Microsatellite-unstable subgroup was small and exploratory.; Early progression was more frequent with pembrolizumab alone.

## Sources

- JAMA Oncol 2020: https://doi.org/10.1001/jamaoncol.2020.3370
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32880601/

## Connected records

- cancers: [Microsatellite-unstable (MSI-high) gastric cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/gastric-msi-high/)
- drugs: [Pembrolizumab](https://onco.cc/drugs/pembrolizumab/)
- trials: [KEYNOTE-062](https://onco.cc/trials/keynote-062/)
- journals: [JAMA Oncology](https://onco.cc/journals/jama-oncology/)

---
JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/paper-keynote-062-shitara-jama-oncol-2020.json