A new phase 1-2 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine showed promising results called daraxonrasib in people with advanced pancreatic cancer whose disease had already been treated with chemotherapy

Daraxonrasib is a new experimental pill being developed for pancreatic cancer by targeting genetic problems (mutations) in a gene called RAS (especially KRAS) that drives most of these cancers.

A group of 168 patients with advanced pancreatic cancer whose disease had already been treated with standard chemotherapy, but whose tumours had started growing again, were studied. The results with daraxonrasib published in The New England Journal of Medicine  were very encouraging:

• Tumours shrank significantly in 35% of the patients who received the target dose (300 mg) compared to 1less than 10% with standard chemotherapy

• >90% achieved disease control (cancer was reduced or stabilised)
• Patients lived about 13–16 months on average, which is longer than typically seen in this setting
• 1/3 of patients had side effects like skin rash, diarrhoea, nausea, fatigue, and mouth irritation

These promising findings suggest that daraxonrasib could become an important new treatment option for advanced pancreatic cancer in a disease where effective treatments are very limited.

References

ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT05379985

Wolpin BM, Park W, Garrido-Laguna I, Spira A, Starodub A, Sommerhalder D, Punekar SR, Barve M, Pelster M, Herzberg B, Azad NS, Hecht JR, Ou SHI, Lin T, Kar S, Tao L, Vora R, Hegde A, Aung K, Hong DS; RMC-6236-001 Investigators. Daraxonrasib in Previously Treated Advanced RAS-Mutated Pancreatic Cancer. N Engl J Med. 2026 May 7;394(18):1790-1802. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2505783

Author:

Ana Martins