This could be the biggest breakthrough in pancreatic cancer in decades
KRAS mutations are not unique to pancreatic cancer, but they are present in the vast majority of pancreatic tumors. Drugs like daraxonrasib are designed to home in on that defect, binding to the altered protein and blocking the signals that drive uncontrolled growth.
In this fluorescence micrograph, pancreatic cancer cells (nuclei in blue) form a spherical cluster encased in membranes (red). Researchers use these lab-grown models to study how mutations like KRAS drive tumor growth and to test drugs that block those signals. USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center/National Cancer Institute/Science Photo Library
In its most recent trial phase, patients who received the drug lived a median of 13.2 months, compared with 6.7 months for those who did not. It may not sound like an exciting increase—just under six months—“but in pancreas cancer, it’s a lot, unfortunately,” says Matthew Katz, a surgical oncologist at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. “In the patient population that was being evaluated, six months is huge. It is a definite win.”
It’s also an advancement that some doctors once believed improbable—if not impossible. The mutations were first discovered in the early ‘80s, but it wasn’t until more than three decades later, in 2013, that researchers learned inhibitory compounds could bind the mutant genes and stop their signals. Suddenly, targeted treatment of KRAS in pancreatic cancer wasn’t a pipe dream.
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Since that breakthrough, doctors and drug manufacturers have been racing to create a medication that could incorporate the findings and specifically attack KRAS in pancreatic cancer. The first KRAS-inhibiting drug was approved by the FDA in 2021 for lung cancer, but it wasn’t potent enough to treat pancreatic cancer. Daraxonrasib, a once daily oral medication, could usher in a new generation of drugs, this time, ones that are strong enough to treat pancreatic cancer, which is more sensitive to KRAS signals and requires more complete blockage than lung cancer, Chen says.
