For reasons that date back to the earliest days of the AIDS epidemic, HIV-positive people with cancer have often been excluded from cancer clinical trials. Now, that may be changing.
On Sunday, at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the nation’s top cancer doctors learned the results of a new study led by physicians at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. It showed that patients with HIV and one of a variety of potentially deadly cancers could be safely treated with the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab, also known by its brand name, KEYTRUDA®.
