Doctors are celebrating a significant advancement in the battle against pancreatic cancer, following the development of a new drug that extends patients’ lives by several crucial months.
The medication, known as daraxonrasib, represents a groundbreaking achievement as it is the first to successfully target the genetic mutation responsible for 90 percent of pancreatic cancer cases—a goal that has eluded scientists for decades.
Initial studies reveal that this once-daily pill can potentially double the survival rate for those suffering from the most lethal form of this disease.
Experts are calling these findings ‘unprecedented,’ marking a pivotal moment in the ongoing fight against a cancer notorious for being highly challenging to treat.
In the UK alone, approximately 10,500 individuals receive a pancreatic cancer diagnosis annually, with more than half succumbing to the disease within three months. This high mortality rate is largely due to late-stage diagnoses, when the cancer has already spread.
Previously, patients had no other choice but to endure highly toxic chemotherapy as their only treatment option.
But those given daraxonrasib – which belongs to a new class of drugs called RAS inhibitors, designed to shut down cancer cells driven by mutant proteins – lived twice as long without the disease worsening as those receiving standard care.
RAS inhibitors have already been hailed by scientists as one of the most significant breakthroughs in treatment for its success in treating certain lung cancers.
The once daily pill was shown to double the life expectancy of pancreatic cancer patients, with experts hailing the drug as ‘landscape changing’
Experts at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago, where the findings were unveiled today, said the results show that ‘the landscape is now changing for pancreatic cancer patients’.
Dr Brian Wolpin, trial lead from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute said: ‘It is exciting that we may soon be able to help patients with metastatic [advanced] pancreatic cancer in ways we haven’t been able to before, improving both survival and quality of life.’
Scientists have long known that a mutation in a gene called KRAS drives nine out of ten cases, yet until now there have been no drugs able to target the problem directly.
‘KRAS has always been the great white whale of oncology,’ Dr George Sledge, chief medical officer at Caris Life Sciences, who wasn’t involved in the trial, said.
‘We’ve always thought if there was a way we could turn off this target, we would be able to treat the untreatable.’
The trial involved 500 patients, with an average age of 66, from North America, Europe and Asia with advanced pancreatic cancer who had previously received treatment.
Just under half of patients received daraxonrasib whilst the remaining patients were given chemotherapy.
The average survival was just over a year in the daraxonrasib group whilst those on chemotherapy lived for just 6.6 months following treatment.
Daraxonrasib also caused fewer serious side effects than chemotherapy – which resulted in 11 per cent of patients stopping treatment.
Dr Rachna Shroff, an ASCO expert in gastrointestinal cancers, who was not involved in the study, labelled the findings ‘revolutionary’.
She said: ‘We are seeing unprecedented survival and efficacy in second-line treatment with an expected safety profile.
‘The RAS revolution is here, and this study is proof of principle that targeting KRAS in pancreatic cancer is feasible and effective.’
Dr Sledge added: ‘This trial offers a real ray of hope. The early data suggests the first active drug we’ve had in pancreatic cancer making it, for the very first time, a truly responsive and treatable disease.’
Experts at Cancer Research UK welcomed the findings saying the drug could give patients more precious time with their loved ones.
‘Although survival has improved for many cancers over the past few decades, pancreatic cancer has not seen the same gains, in part because it is often diagnosed at a late stage.
‘A treatment that could double survival in this disease would be unprecedented,’ Dr Samuel Godfrey, the charity’s research lead said.
The data from the trial will now be submitted to regulators in the US and eventually the UK with the aim of getting the drug approved.
A spokesperson from Revolution Medicine, who funded the trial, said they are ‘committed’ to bringing daraxonrasib as quickly as possible to patients given the ‘significant unmet need in pancreatic cancer.’
Dr Wolpin concluded: ‘It is a targeted therapy that we expect to be relevant to all patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer.
‘Were this drug to be approved, it would mark a dramatic shift in how pancreatic cancer is treated.’
