After new drug’s ‘unprecedented’ results for pancreatic cancer, doctors look at other uses

Health newsAfter new drug’s ‘unprecedented’ results for pancreatic cancer, doctors look at other uses The experimental drug daraxonrasib, which doubled survival time in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, may also prove effective for lung, colon and ovarian cancers.Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Daraxonrasib is taken as three pills once a day. The experimental pill has been fast-tracked by the Food and Drug Administration for approval.Patrick Martin / NBC NewsShareAdd NBC News to GoogleMay 31, 2026, 8:00 AM EDTBy Erika EdwardsEvery single patient with advanced pancreatic cancer who walked into Dr. Zev Wainberg’s office told him they would rather take an experimental medication than endure another round of chemotherapy. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Wainberg, co-director of UCLA Health’s GI Oncology Program, was leading a clinical trial of a new drug called daraxonrasib. All the study participants previously had chemotherapy that was starting to fail. “Statistically, I knew only half of them get the pill, and we don’t get to choose,” Wainberg said. “I put a lot of patients on the chemo arm, and none of them are alive anymore.” “It’s one of the most emotional studies I’ve ever been a part of,” he said.Enthusiasm around daraxonrasib is reaching a fever pitch. In the phase 3 trial of 500 patients, the drug was shown to double the survival time of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, a notoriously deadly cancer: 13.2 months, on average, compared to 6.7 months for people who got chemo. On Sunday, Wainberg and his colleagues presented those results at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in Chicago. The full study was simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine. When Revolution Medicines, which makes the drug, released the trial’s preliminary findings in April, Dr. Rachna Shroff, chief of the division of hematology and oncology at...