I have a question on a post Pristine Hunter made a day or two ago.

This is the Clinical Trial Referenced

Study of Sacituzumab Govitecan-hziy and Pembrolizumab Versus Treatment of Physician's Choice and Pembrolizumab in Patients With Previously Untreated, Locally Advanced Inoperable or Metastatic Triple-Negative Breast Cancer (ASCENT-04)

ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT05382286

Sponsor Gilead Sciences

Information provided by Gilead Sciences (Responsible Party)
Last Update Posted 2024-12-24

Quote:

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Brief Summary
The primary objective of this study is to compare the progression-free survival (PFS) between sacituzumab govitecan-hziy (SG) and pembrolizumab versus treatment of physician's choice (TPC) and pembrolizumab in participants with previously untreated, locally advanced inoperable or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, whose tumors express programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) .

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My question:
What is Gilead's hope/intention by combining with Keytruda for tumors that express PD-L1?

Is Gilead seeking approval for Trodelvy in combination with Keytruda for PD-L1+ Tumors?

or

Is Gilead hoping that Merck would want to combine with SG to extend Keytruda's patent and thereby also give Gilead access to every mTNBC PD-L1 positive tumor that Keytruda is approved to treat?

Gilead apparently wants sooner access to this market, but they may want Merck to come in on it to extend their patent as well is what I'm thinking.