A drug called daraxonrasib cut the risk of death by 60 percent in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer who had already been treated with chemotherapy. The findings came from a phase 3 clinical trial and were published in the New England Journal of Medicine, then presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago at the end of May.
According to Healthline, the trial was called RASolute 302 and involved 500 participants with solid tumors carrying activating RAS mutations. That type of gene mutation appears in the cancer cells of 92 percent of pancreatic cancer cases. Researchers focused on 168 participants who had received prior chemotherapy. Those patients took daraxonrasib orally once a day, with 300 milligrams selected as the phase 3 dose.
Patients on daraxonrasib survived an average of 13 months from diagnosis compared to 6 months for those on standard chemotherapy. In patients with a specific RAS mutation called G12, tumors stayed under control for a median of about 7 months on daraxonrasib versus about 3 months on chemotherapy. About 33 percent of patients with the G12 mutation saw their tumors shrink or disappear, compared to about 12 percent of those on chemotherapy. Overall, 31 percent of all trial participants had tumors shrink or disappear, against 11 percent in the chemotherapy group.
Pancreatic cancer carries the highest mortality rate of all major cancers. Early detection remains the primary tool for improving outcomes, and new second-line treatments have been limited.
Revolution Medicines manufactures daraxonrasib. The company's chief executive officer and chairman, Mark Goldsmith, called the trial results a major breakthrough. "These results represent a potentially transformative advance for patients and underscore daraxonrasib's potential to redefine the treatment landscape," Goldsmith said in a statement.
Researchers not connected to the trial also responded to the findings. Diane Simeone, director of the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center and founder and chief scientific advisor of the Pancreatic Cancer Early Detection Consortium, described the moment in stark terms. "This is an extraordinarily hopeful moment for the pancreatic cancer field," Simeone said.
The drug targets RAS mutations, which have long been considered difficult to block. The fact that daraxonrasib works against a mutation present in the vast majority of pancreatic cancer cases makes the results significant to researchers watching the field.
