KEYNOTE-867
pembrolizumab in unresected stage I/II non-small cell lung cancer
KEYNOTE-867 asks whether adding pembrolizumab to stereotactic body radiotherapy improves outcomes in unresected stage I–II non-small cell lung cancer. Commentary comes from X and LinkedIn posts and physician contributions on YouTube. Debate centers on whether pembrolizumab should be added routinely and how event-free survival should be interpreted, with the endpoint’s meaning contested. Discordant phase II and phase III findings also divide expectations for further SBRT–immunotherapy research.
- NCT03924869 ↗
- v1.0.0 · edition 1
- updated Oct 31, 2026
- Standard
12 findings, and what sits behind each
01. Restraint in routine immunotherapy addition is the leading clinical reading, but its scope matters
18 statements · 16 passages · 12 sources · 12 named voices
Counterview: recorded · Limitations recorded: 2. Feeds the Medical Affairs question.
Draws on: Design and conduct, Safety and tolerability, Primary endpoint: Event-free Survival (EFS), Secondary endpoints, Population and setting, The comparison.
02. Frailty, competing mortality and strong local control explain why some clinicians would withhold additional treatment
25 statements · 24 passages · 11 sources · 11 named voices
Counterview: recorded · Limitations recorded: 2. Feeds the Medical Affairs question.
Draws on: Population and setting, Safety and tolerability, Secondary endpoints, The comparison.
03. Concurrent treatment is challenged more strongly than all possible radiation–immunotherapy sequencing
18 statements · 17 passages · 9 sources · 9 named voices
Counterview: recorded · Limitations recorded: 2. Feeds the Medical Affairs question.
Draws on: The comparison, Design and conduct, Secondary endpoints, Population and setting.
04. Duration is an independent concern about burden, toxicity, incentives and trial controls
18 statements · 18 passages · 9 sources · 14 named voices
Counterview: recorded · Limitations recorded: 3. Feeds the Medical Affairs question.
Draws on: The comparison, Safety and tolerability.
05. Discordant phase II and phase III findings generate both methodological skepticism and continued optimism
25 statements · 25 passages · 13 sources · 19 named voices
Counterview: recorded · Limitations recorded: 2. Feeds the Medical Affairs question.
Draws on: Design and conduct, The comparison.
06. EFS interpretation is disputed, including whether imaging changes were mistaken for progression
13 statements · 13 passages · 5 sources · 6 named voices
Counterview: recorded · Limitations recorded: 4. Feeds the Medical Affairs question.
Draws on: Primary endpoint: Event-free Survival (EFS), Secondary endpoints, Safety and tolerability, Design and conduct.
07. Selection and personalization remain open questions, including alternatives to adding IO to SBRT
10 statements · 10 passages · 9 sources · 7 named voices
Counterview: recorded · Limitations recorded: 3. Feeds the Medical Affairs question.
Draws on: Population and setting.
08. Local-treatment suitability and anatomy qualify any discussion of adding systemic therapy
11 statements · 6 passages · 3 sources · 3 named voices
Counterview: none recorded · Limitations recorded: 3. Feeds the Medical Affairs question.
Draws on: Population and setting.
09. The result does not resolve surgery versus SBRT in fit patients, despite strong opinions about that choice
31 statements · 25 passages · 7 sources · 13 named voices
Counterview: recorded · Limitations recorded: 3. Feeds the Medical Affairs question.
Draws on: Population and setting, Secondary endpoints.
10. Earlier cure-optimization debates include emphatic but contested claims about dissemination and surrogate signals
27 statements · 27 passages · 3 sources · 7 named voices
Counterview: recorded · Limitations recorded: 3. Feeds the Medical Affairs question.
11. Mechanistic explanations remain disputed, with exploratory alternatives rather than demonstrated rescue strategies
21 statements · 20 passages · 6 sources · 10 named voices
Counterview: recorded · Limitations recorded: 3. Feeds the Medical Affairs question.
Draws on: The comparison.
12. Access, recruitment and support for affected patients are distinct from efficacy interpretation
12 statements · 11 passages · 8 sources · 7 named voices
Counterview: recorded · Limitations recorded: 3. Feeds the Medical Affairs question.
Draws on: The comparison.
Counts overlap, since one statement can back several findings. They show what the report kept, not how many clinicians agree. The full report includes the interpretations and source links.
Select a finding to see what the full report holds for it: how many verified HCP statements and of what kind, the passages behind them, the sources and voices, and the counterview and limits it records. Select a part of the trial to see which findings draw on it.
- Finding 1 of 12
Restraint in routine immunotherapy addition is the leading clinical reading, but its scope matters
- statements
- 18
- passages
- 16
- sources
- 12
- named voices
- 12
What the statements areViews 12Questions and uncertainty 2Clinical experience 0Comparisons 2Restated results and context 2How passages are usedSupporting a statement 19Giving context 1Recorded with the finding- Counterview: recorded
- Limitations: 2
- Feeds the Medical Affairs question
- 9 posts and articles
- 1 podcast or video
- 1 publication
- 1 registry
Draws on: Design and conduct, Safety and tolerability, Primary endpoint: Event-free Survival (EFS), Secondary endpoints, Population and setting, The comparison.
In the full report: the interpretation in full, all 18 statements cited to source and date, and the 12 sources linked where public.
Thicker lines mean more shared statements. A finding without a line goes beyond the registered design. Counts overlap, since one statement can back several findings, and they show what the report kept, not how many clinicians agree.
The full KEYNOTE-867 report gives each finding its interpretation, the attributed views behind it, counterviews, limits and the verified HCP statements, each linked to the original. Get a complete report free to see what you get.
What evidence would justify moving from routine restraint to a selected, tolerable systemic-treatment strategy after or around SBRT?
Raised by the leading finding. The report shows what clinicians said and the sources behind it; it does not settle the question.
By the numbers
free- 96HCP commentary sources screened
- 57sources cited by verified HCP statements
- 72named in screened sources
- 72voices cited in the report
- 66cited voices matched to verified clinician profiles
Also in the sources: 5 organizational or shared accounts, not counted as people.
- 258verified statements, each linked to its source
- 178of them from speakers with a confirmed clinical role
- 12findings
Screened sources were retrieved for this trial. Cited sources back at least one verified statement and include primary sources used for context. No count estimates how many clinicians hold a view. Size (Standard) is set by the 258 verified statements. Statements from sponsors, hosts and organisations are labelled and count apart from identified clinicians. A confirmed clinical role is one verified by the NPI registry or by the person's own institution's staff page; a role a source only states is not counted.
What's inside
free| Section | Items | Access |
|---|---|---|
| Findings with interpretation, counterviews and limits | 12 | Titles free |
| Detailed analysis | 13 sections | Paid |
| Verified statements with short source quotes and links | 258 | Paid |
| Trial aspects mapped | 15 | Free |
| Sources with links | 57 | Counts free |
| Speaker attribution for cited voices | 72 | Paid |
Trial aspects
15 discussed · 0 no commentary · 0 incomplete| Aspect | Statements | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Primary endpoint: Event-free Survival (EFS) | 10 | 6 |
| Secondary endpoints | 11 | 11 |
| Population and setting | 39 | 16 |
| The comparison | 29 | 13 |
| Safety and tolerability | 20 | 9 |
| Design and conduct | 27 | 21 |
| Phase II–phase III discordance and the awaited PACIFIC-4/PACIFIC-IV result | 28 | 13 |
| Duration, treatment burden and salvage-treatment controls | 18 | 9 |
| Biomarkers, residual disease risk and personalized treatment | 11 | 10 |
| Anatomy, fractionation and alternatives when SBRT is unsuitable | 11 | 3 |
| Operable treatment choices and the validity of SBRT–surgery comparisons | 31 | 7 |
| Early-stage cure optimization, dissemination and the limits of surrogate signals | 27 | 3 |
| Radiation–immune biology and exploratory combination strategies | 21 | 6 |
| Access, recruitment, affordability and support after treatment discontinuation | 11 | 7 |
| Endpoint ascertainment, clinical relevance and limits of further planned evidence | 8 | 4 |
An aspect marked incomplete is a question the public commentary did not let us answer. We show it rather than hide it.
Sources
free| Channel | Screened | Cited | |
|---|---|---|---|
| X threads | 87 | 50 | |
| LinkedIn posts | 3 | 3 | |
| Bluesky threads | 4 | 0 | |
| YouTube | 2 | 2 | |
| Primary sources, cited for context, not screened | |||
| Publications | not screened | 1 | |
| Registry | not screened | 1 | |
max 38 / quarter
- Screened window
- Apr 23, 2019 → Oct 30, 2026
- Cited window
- Apr 23, 2020 → Oct 30, 2026
- Retrieved
- Oct 31, 2026
The trial
from ClinicalTrials.gov- Title
- A Phase 3, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Study to Evaluate the Safety and Efficacy of Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT) With or Without Pembrolizumab (MK-3475) in Participants With Unresected Stages I or II Non Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) (KEYNOTE-867)
- Registry
- NCT03924869
- Study IDs
- 3475-867 · MK-3475-867 (MSD) · KEYNOTE-867 (MSD) · 194909 (JAPAC-CTI) · 2022-500413-11-00 (EU CT) · U1111-1275-8515 (UTN) · 2018-004320-11
- Sponsor
- Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC
- Design
- Phase 3 · Interventional, randomized, parallel
- Status
- Terminated
- Enrollment
- 448 actual
- Registered
- 2019-04-23
- Start
- 2019-06-25 actual
- Primary completion
- 2024-06-11 actual
- Primary endpoint
- Event-free Survival (EFS)
- Interventions
- 3 registered
Scope and limits
freeThis report does not judge efficacy, estimate HCP prevalence or consensus or give treatment advice.
- Discussion that does not name the trial may be missing from this edition.
- Not yet captured in this edition: a remark on studying upfront alternatives to surgery to optimize cure in stage I lung cancer.
- Not yet captured in this edition: a view on uncertainty over adjuvant versus salvage immunotherapy and similar trial designs in unresected early-stage lung cancer.
- Some passages in the sources used in this report were not fully assessed for clinician views, so a view there may be missing from this edition.
- 116 statements in the sources reviewed for this edition are about other patients or topics, or only mention the trial, and are not counted.
- Further source limits: discussion that describes the trial without naming it may be incomplete; some discussion that describes the trial without naming it may be missing.
- The report describes the sources reviewed for this edition, not all public discussion or the frequency of opinions among HCPs. Trial-name-focused source selection may miss unnamed references and transcription variants.
- Some potentially relevant passages were not fully assessed. Portions of the salvage-control, treatment-duration and financial-burden discussion may contain additional reasons or qualifications not represented here.
- The account of the local-treatment dissemination exchange is incomplete, including an additional response to physiological counterarguments and uncertainty in a relayed radiation caution's attribution. A complete account of treatment choices when surgery could not proceed after neoadjuvant therapy is also unavailable.
- Many numerical results, subgroup observations and proposed explanations are reported by speakers. Detailed event adjudication, subgroup tables and full safety analyses are not available in the statements used here; these views cannot establish misclassification, a predictive subgroup or a causal mechanism.
- The primary publication passage provides a conclusion, while the protocol amendment provides an interim stopping account and revised follow-up plans. Neither justifies treating every social-post numerical or mechanistic interpretation as a primary result.
- Some speakers' identities or clinical roles are not established in the sources used in this report; each statement is attributed only as far as its source shows.
- Source descriptions of a speaker as presenting KEYNOTE-867 and another speaker as involved in KEYNOTE-867 are attributed descriptions of involvement, not evidence that their views are independent external assessments.
- Historical statements about eligibility, treatment schedules, enrollment targets and site access are preserved as dated accounts. Differences between those accounts are not silently reconciled, and post dates do not establish meeting dates or changes of mind.
- Comparisons with I-SABR, S1914, surgical studies and other radiation–immunotherapy experiences involve different regimens, populations or endpoints. They explain speakers' reasoning but do not establish comparative efficacy between those alternatives.
How reports are built and checked: Methods.
Editions and corrections
freeLast checked for new commentary Oct 31, 2026. A new or changed finding gets a new version number; added evidence alone is a smaller update. No corrections.
Cite this report
Erudio Health. KEYNOTE-867 (NCT03924869): HCP commentary report. Edition 1, v1.0.0. Accepted Oct 31, 2026. https://www.erudio.com/reports/keynote-867-nct03924869
For your AI agent
Paste this into ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot or your own agent. It previews this report through the free Erudio MCP server, tells you whether it answers your question, and orders it if you ask. Some agents ask you to confirm pasted instructions before acting; that is expected.
Help me decide whether to buy the Erudio report "KEYNOTE-867" (NCT03924869), and buy it for me if I ask. Erudio reports cover what clinicians say in public about one clinical trial, with every verified statement linked to its source.
1. Use the free Erudio MCP server at https://mcp.erudio.com/free; it needs no sign-in. Nothing needs installing: if it is not connected in this app and you can make HTTP requests, call it directly with JSON-RPC POSTs to that URL (initialize, then tools/call), sending "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream". Call get_report_card with slug "keynote-867-03924869". If you cannot make requests, read https://www.erudio.com/reports/keynote-867-nct03924869.md instead.
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4. Once it is paid, call get_order with the status_url: it returns my license key. Then use the Erudio MCP server at https://mcp.erudio.com/mcp with the header "Authorization: Bearer <key>". Call read_report with report_id erudio-nct03924869 and sections ["all"], and summarize the findings for me with their sources. The full report is large (about 500 KB): save the response to a file and work from it rather than printing it. If you cannot, read sections ["narratives"] first, the executive summary and analysis.
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Keep the key private to my organization.Or read the record directly: JSON, Markdown or MCP
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get_report_card({ "slug": "keynote-867-03924869" })release 4acb74440eaf5e4a596a2f749d139eb1165c464027c03d5ec32f7db85de65111