Everyday Health: Groundbreaking Drug May Double Survival Time for Pancreatic Cancer
Everyday Health recently interviewed Andrew Hendifar, MD, medical director of the Cancer Clinical Trials Office and the Gastrointestinal Oncology Disease Research Group at Cedars-Sinai, about an experimental treatment that nearly doubled survival time for people with advanced pancreatic cancer who participated in a research study.
Results from the Phase III study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, could expand treatment options for one of the deadliest and most difficult-to-treat cancers. Pancreatic cancer is rarely caught early—symptoms go unnoticed until the disease is advanced—giving it a five-year relative survival rate of just 13%.
“There is new hope for pancreatic cancer,” said Hendifar, a principal investigator on the trial and co-author of the study. “With additional research and progress, the future is brighter.”
In the trial, patients who received the experimental drug, daraxonrasib, had a median overall survival of 13.2 months, compared with 6.6 months for those treated with standard chemotherapy. Participants had metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, the most common form of pancreatic cancer, that had not yet been treated.
“The medicine is highly effective and it’s a pill—the first oral medication for pancreatic cancers generally,” Hendifar told Everyday Health.
Daraxonrasib targets KRAS, a gene mutation found in most pancreatic cancers that drives tumor growth.
“Until now, it has been undruggable,” Hendifar said of KRAS.
Although scientists have long recognized KRAS as a key driver of cancer, developing therapies that effectively target the mutation has proved challenging. The success of daraxonrasib could pave the way for new treatments for pancreatic and other KRAS-driven cancers.
Hendifar told Everyday Health the drug could receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration within months after an application is submitted. In the meantime, some eligible patients could be able to access the experimental treatment through compassionate-use or expanded-access programs.
Read the complete article from Everyday Health.