Daraxonrasib sparks standing ovation at ASCO

daraxonrasib nearly – At the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in Chicago on May 31, Harvard oncologist Brian Wolpin presented a trial result for daraxonrasib that nearly doubled median overall survival in previously treated advanced pancreatic cancer. The burs

In a darkened convention hall in Chicago on May 31, Harvard oncologist Brian Wolpin stepped to the podium and recited a string of numbers for 42 seconds. The impact was instant: a roomful of cancer doctors rose to their feet for what felt like longer than any scripted moment.

Adam Feuerstein—who has covered cancer conferences for two decades as a biotech correspondent for the health news site Stat—said he had never witnessed anything like it. The applause lasted long enough that Wolpin, caught off-guard, ad-libbed: “That time was not built into my talk.”

The presentation was, on the surface, simple: a line graph tied to a drug called daraxonrasib. In a 500-patient trial of a form of previously treated advanced pancreatic cancer, the drug nearly doubled median overall survival. ASCO’s chief medical officer Julie Gralow described the result as not a “home run” but a “grand slam.” Toronto oncologist Jennifer Knox called it a “game changer.”.

Pancreatic cancer remains one of the most pernicious and treatment-resistant cancers. killing more than 50. 000 Americans each year. including Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Its five-year survival rate is in the low teens. So the standing ovation wasn’t just about one study’s design or one set of outcomes. It was about what the field has spent decades living with—and what doctors rarely get to see: a change that looks like it can bend the trajectory.

Wolpin’s background, and the memory he carried into the room, made that tension sharper. He began his career in the mid-2000s at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In conversation with The Bulwark. Wolpin said he believed he “saw several patients that first year of fellowship who had pancreatic cancer. and they all died in like three months.” He added. “It’s not supposed to happen here. right?. You’re supposed to have figured this out.”.

That “supposed to” has been the refrain since President Richard Nixon declared a “war on cancer.” Yet for decades after that declaration. deaths kept mounting and progress on many cancers remained limited. There are still reasons for caution. but the broader numbers now point in a different direction: the US death rate from cancer has fallen 34 percent from its 1991 peak through 2023. For people diagnosed between 2015 to 2021. the five-year relative survival for all cancers combined reached 70 percent. up from 50 percent in the 1970s.

The drug moment at ASCO was the loudest note in a week—and in a longer arc—but it sat inside several converging advances. One of the biggest shifts comes from immunotherapy. Instead of attacking tumors directly the way conventional chemotherapy does. these treatments use a patient’s own immune system to hunt and kill cancer cells.

You can see the effect of that approach through the story of former President Jimmy Carter. Diagnosed in 2015 at age 90 with metastatic melanoma that had spread to his liver and brain. Carter went on to be treated with the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab. along with surgery and radiation. Tumors vanished, and he managed to live another decade.

Scientists are also pushing immunotherapy in new directions. At the ASCO meeting. Moderna and Merck reported results from a combination of a personalized mRNA vaccine—based on the technology behind the Covid shots. retrained on each patient’s own tumor—and an immunotherapy drug. pembrolizumab. In high-risk melanoma, the combination reduced the risk of recurrence or death by 49 percent after five years. In a small. early Memorial Sloan Kettering trial of a similar vaccine. researchers reported that it helped some pancreatic cancer patients stay cancer-free longer after surgery. Seven of the eight patients who responded to the vaccine were still alive four to six years later. with a larger trial now underway.

A Memorial Sloan Kettering trial of a similar vaccine in 2024 kept pancreatic cancer at bay in patients whose immune systems responded to it. For blood cancers, a different strategy is moving fast: CAR T-cell therapy. The first child with cancer ever treated with CAR T. Emily Whitehead. is now more than a decade cancer-free and attending college.

Even with all that progress in treatment, the ambition is shifting toward prevention—catching cancer before it starts. Last week. a team led by the Francis Crick Institute’s Charles Swanton reported that a blood test measuring 14 proteins. combined with basic risk factors like age. smoking. and lung disease. could identify people likely to develop lung cancer years before diagnosis. The team also found a clue from an older drug trial: an anti-inflammatory drug seemed to cut lung cancer risk nearly in half among people with the highest inflammation levels.

Swanton compared the idea to how statins work for heart disease. Cholesterol tests can predict risk, and then statins can lower cholesterol. In the same way, the protein test would identify lung cancer risk, and the anti-inflammatory drug would reduce it.

Both findings are early. They are not yet a blood test and prevention treatment doctors can offer patients. But they point toward oncology moving toward catching cancer before it takes hold—mirroring how prevention and early action reshaped heart disease outcomes.

That preventive turn is showing up elsewhere too. A University of Pennsylvania study of more than 110. 000 women. also reported at the ASCO meeting. found that taking GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic was associated with about 30 percent lower breast cancer incidence. Here again, the work remains early, with no immediate expectation of major changes overnight.

Still, the field’s direction is hard to miss. The cost of those advances, though, is immediate. The average monthly price of a new cancer drug more than doubled between 2009 and 2019. About half of surveyed American cancer patients and survivors have to take on debt to pay for treatment. Some prices are likely to fall when patents run out and generics emerge. But there’s another fear tied to the engine that produces these breakthroughs: the scientific pipeline itself.

Nearly every advance mentioned—each step forward in immunotherapy. vaccines. early detection. and CAR T—can be traced back to federally funded basic research. Yet the Trump administration has been attacking that foundation relentlessly. In 2025. the administration froze or canceled thousands of National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation grants. while new NIH awards fell by billions of dollars. Congress later rejected the deepest proposed NIH cuts. but the damage was already real: hundreds of NIH-funded clinical trials were disrupted. and early-career scientists became much less likely to win major grants.

The hope offered on the ASCO stage came with a shadow off it: if funding is constrained. the next wave of discoveries may arrive more slowly—or not at all. At the meeting, that risk was made personal in the opening address. ASCO’s outgoing president Eric Small spoke about his partner. Amy Lin. a University of San Francisco oncologist. who died in December of metastatic clear cell ovarian cancer. a deadly disease that still has few treatment options. He brought on grief expert and author David Kessler to give a talk on compassionate end-of-life care.

Cancer, for many oncologists, has always been paired with loss—spoken rarely, but present in every clinic. Wolpin’s own story began with that reality too. He said he started by watching pancreatic patients die within months and feeling certain it wasn’t supposed to happen at a place like Dana-Farber.

The ovation he received was the sound of a room responding to that exact tension. It was the kind of applause that carries a message without anyone having to say it: the disease that once seemed untreatable is starting to lose its terrible power.

ASCO daraxonrasib pancreatic cancer immunotherapy CAR T-cell therapy Jimmy Carter GLP-1 Ozempic federal grants NIH National Science Foundation lung cancer prevention