daraxonrasib doubles – A daily pill called daraxonrasib has been tested in metastatic pancreatic cancer patients whose disease stopped responding to chemotherapy. In results presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting on 31 May, average survival reached 13.2 month
A daily pill can’t change how quickly pancreatic cancer spreads. But in a study involving 500 people who had already run out of options after chemotherapy stopped working, daraxonrasib appears to have bought something that feels rare in this disease: time.
Pilar Acedo, at University College London and not involved in the research, called the treatment transformative. “For decades, [survival outcomes] haven’t changed for pancreatic cancer,” she said. “The new treatment gives you double the amount of time to enjoy your life. be with your family and do things that you would like to do.”.
Pancreatic cancer is usually discovered late. Around 70 per cent of people are diagnosed at an advanced stage. in part because there is no routine screening and symptoms can be vague—such as a sore back—when the cancer has already spread elsewhere. Standard treatment involves chemotherapy, but even with it, most people survive for about three to six months on average.
That grim baseline is part of why the results presented in Chicago on 31 May at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting landed with force. In the daraxonrasib group, participants went on to survive for 13.2 months on average, compared with 6.7 months in the chemotherapy group.
The biological target is also central to why researchers believe the pill could work where earlier approaches have struggled. More than 90 per cent of pancreatic cancers are driven by mutations in the KRAS gene, which encodes the protein K-Ras. When KRAS is mutated, K-Ras gets stuck in a state that drives cancer cells to divide uncontrollably.
Eileen O’Reilly at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and her colleagues focused on that mechanism with daraxonrasib, a drug that binds to the protein in an effort to dampen its signals and slow cancer-cell growth.
In the trial, 500 people with metastatic pancreatic cancer were recruited from the US, Europe and Asia. All had stopped responding to an initial round of chemotherapy. Participants were split into two groups: one received daraxonrasib every day, while the other continued to get standard chemotherapy infusions.
Beyond survival numbers, the study reported a difference in how often side effects derailed treatment. In the daraxonrasib group, only 1 per cent stopped taking the drug due to side effects such as rash. In contrast, 11 per cent stopped chemotherapy because of adverse events including fatigue. Acedo emphasized the practical burden as well. “A daily pill is also much easier to take than chemotherapy. which involves frequent hospital visits and is invasive. ” she said.
One key tension runs through the findings: the pill clearly extends survival. but it does not turn metastatic pancreatic cancer into a controllable chronic condition. Acedo said it still means people are dying of the disease. “It’s a few extra months. which is really promising. but it’s still not years and they’re still dying of the disease. ” she said.
The researchers have now submitted the results to the US Food and Drug Administration, and O’Reilly said the team hopes to get daraxonrasib approved for use in people with metastatic pancreatic cancer who have had chemotherapy in the coming months.
The work doesn’t stop there. O’Reilly said ongoing trials are exploring whether daraxonrasib could be combined with other experimental drugs or chemotherapy to improve outcomes further. The team is also looking at whether daraxonrasib could be used as a first-line therapy in untreated patients.
For now, the headline is stark and unusually hopeful for a cancer where time has long been measured in months. In a population already resistant to chemotherapy. a daily pill nearly doubled average survival—13.2 months compared with 6.7—and did so with side effects that led far fewer people to stop treatment.
daraxonrasib pancreatic cancer KRAS K-Ras metastatic pancreatic cancer chemotherapy resistance survival time American Society of Clinical Oncology FDA targeted therapy