{"id":523637,"date":"2026-06-29T05:06:36","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T05:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/523637\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T05:06:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T05:06:36","slug":"a-pancreatic-cancer-drug-provides-new-hope-five-things-to-know-about-daraxonrasib","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/523637\/","title":{"rendered":"A pancreatic cancer drug provides new hope: Five things to know about daraxonrasib"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI don\u2019t see it providing a cure, but it\u2019s going to allow people to live with the disease,\u201d Delitto said. \u201cWe’ve never had anything like that before.\u201d<\/p>\n

We asked Delitto to explain how daraxonrasib works, why pancreatic cancer is so hard to treat, and what else is on the horizon for pancreatic cancer patients. These are his top takeaways.<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Pancreatic cancer has multiple barriers to treatment<\/p>\n

Just 13% of patients with pancreatic cancer survive five years past their diagnosis, according to the American Cancer Society<\/a>. That makes it one of the deadliest of all cancers. There are several reasons for this, Delitto said. For one, pancreatic cancer seems to metastasize very early in its growth. Many patients have tumors that have already spread in the body by the time they are diagnosed.<\/p>\n

Another reason is that the pancreas is nestled deep in the abdomen, close to other important bodily structures. Pancreatic tumors are very likely to involve important blood vessels or other essential parts of the digestive system, making them difficult to remove surgically. Even for the 20% of patients where surgery is an option, the procedure to remove the cancer is brutal.<\/p>\n

Known as the Whipple procedure, this intensive surgery involves removing the head of the pancreas as well as several adjacent parts of the digestive system, then reconnecting the pancreas, bile duct and stomach to the remaining intestine. Recovery is slow, and surgery patients must also have very toxic chemotherapy to try to prevent the cancer\u2019s recurrence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a lot to go through,\u201d Delitto said. \u201cAnd even if they go through all that, the chance of it coming back is still around 80%.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for non-surgical treatment, pancreatic cancer is especially resistant to chemotherapy and immunotherapy. That\u2019s in part because it recruits and forms a sticky, gooey shell of biological material from non-cancerous cells around it. Known as fibrosis, this extracellular material forms near-impenetrable walls around tumors that shield the cancer from immune recognition and from many of chemotherapy\u2019s cancer-killing effects. Delitto\u2019s lab<\/a> is working on ways to make that sticky wall more permeable to the body\u2019s natural immune defenses.<\/p>\n

Patients who are not eligible for surgery are offered chemotherapy, but the form of chemotherapy used for pancreatic cancer is particularly harsh, leaving patients very sick. It also doesn\u2019t typically buy them much time before the tumors grow back, Delitto said. Many of his patients who aren\u2019t eligible for surgery decline to take this chemotherapy, knowing it won\u2019t do much to extend their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very persistent tumor. Even when you treat it with chemo and it goes well, it comes back. When you hit it with radiation, it comes back. When you do surgery, it comes back,\u201d he said. \u201cRight now, without a more effective therapy with fewer side effects, we\u2019re stuck in this cycle of recurrence.\u201d<\/p>\n

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2.\u00a0Daraxonrasib overcomes \u2018undruggable\u2019 status<\/p>\n

Unlike most other types of cancers that have a variety of genetic drivers, more than 90%<\/a> of pancreatic tumors are driven by spontaneous mutations in a gene known as KRAS. The protein made by this gene, K-Ras, drives cellular growth when it is active. The cancer-linked mutations in KRAS leave the protein stuck in an always-on state.<\/p>\n

While chemotherapy works broadly to inhibit cell growth, targeted cancer drugs bind to and block specific proteins that are necessary for that tumor to survive. Many such drugs, also called small molecule inhibitors, have been developed in recent years and have changed survival statistics for several cancers.<\/p>\n

But K-Ras has long been considered out of reach. That\u2019s because small molecule inhibitors burrow into tiny pockets on the surfaces of their targets to block their function \u2014 but no such tiny pocket exists in the K-Ras protein. It\u2019s been dubbed a \u201cgreasy ball\u201d by some researchers for its lack of surface niches.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the past 15 or so years, you go to all these oncology conferences and they\u2019ll have sessions called, \u2018Where are we with the undruggable K-Ras?\u2019\u201d Delitto said. \u201cDespite so many attempts and so much incremental knowledge, we\u2019ve never been able to hit it really well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daraxonrasib works differently: It tethers the K-Ras protein to another naturally occurring protein in such a way that K-Ras\u2019 active regions are blocked. Some call this method a molecular clamp, Delitto said. Because of this method of action, daraxonrasib should be able to inhibit any mutated K-Ras protein \u2014 which accounts for most cases of pancreatic cancer.<\/p>\n

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3.\u00a0The drug is not yet approved, but certain patients may be able to access it<\/p>\n

The study that was presented at the recent oncology meeting was a phase 3 clinical trial, the stage of clinical trial that is typically used to apply for approval from the Food and Drug Administration. The drug\u2019s manufacturer, the Redwood City, CA, pharmaceutical company Revolution Medicines Inc., recently received what\u2019s known as \u201cexpanded access<\/a>\u201d from the FDA. Oncologists can now apply for access to daraxonrasib for certain patients, namely those with metastatic pancreatic cancer who have already been treated with another therapy and still seen their cancer progress.<\/p>\n

Stanford Medicine will soon join an ongoing phase 3 trial<\/a> run by Revolution Medicines that will test daraxonrasib\u2019s efficacy in pancreatic cancer patients who have undergone surgery and chemotherapy, in the hope that the drug will better prevent tumor recurrence in surgery patients as well. Eventually, Delitto hopes the medication will be offered to a broader pool of pancreatic cancer patients and not just those who have already tried other treatments that have failed to treat their tumors. It also could one day expand the pool of patients for whom surgery is an option, he said, if it shrinks tumors that are tangled with blood vessels or other organs enough that they could be safely removed.<\/p>\n

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4.\u00a0There is a quality-of-life component<\/p>\n

Daraxonrasib is an oral pill and, while it\u2019s not completely without side effects, it seems to have fewer toxic side effects than the kind of chemotherapy pancreatic cancer patients must take.<\/p>\n

The most common side effects reported in the clinical trial presented at the conference were severe rashes and mouth sores<\/a>. Those more tolerable side effects are very appealing for his patients, Delitto said, many of whom are older \u2014 the average age at diagnosis<\/a> for pancreatic cancer is 70.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow you\u2019re opening up this whole quality-of-life chapter for patients that they just never had before,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Healthy habits for your 60s, 70s & beyond<\/p>\n

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5.\u00a0Pancreatic cancer vaccines are in earlier stages, but hold promise<\/p>\n

In other promising news shared at the ASCO conference, patients who responded to a personalized pancreatic cancer vaccine<\/a> developed by researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center are still alive several years after the beginning of the trial. That study was a phase 1 clinical trial, smaller and more preliminary than the daraxonrasib trial, but the companies involved have since opened a larger, phase 2 trial. The vaccine uses mRNA, the same technology that underlies the most commonly given COVID vaccines.<\/p>\n

While most of us might think of preventive flu or measles shots when we hear the word vaccine, scientists also use the term for therapeutic injections that train a patient\u2019s immune system to recognize and attack something already present in the body \u2014 in this case, a tumor. Therapeutic vaccines for some kinds of melanoma, bladder cancer and prostate cancer have received FDA approval, and many more types of cancer vaccines are currently making their way through clinical trials.<\/p>\n

In the study presented at ASCO, the scientists sequenced patients\u2019 pancreatic tumors removed during surgery and built bespoke vaccines tailored to their cancer genomes. Out of the 16 patients in the trial, eight mounted a lasting immune response to the tumor after receiving the vaccine. Out of those eight, seven are still alive now, four to six years later, and haven\u2019t seen a recurrence of their cancers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a pretty remarkable accomplishment,\u201d Delitto said. \u201cThe promise of it is that cure word that we\u2019re always warning patients we can\u2019t really say right now for pancreatic cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

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