Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to treat — and in many cases leads to death just months after diagnosis. So it is no surprise that this headline created a stir: In a recent study, a new drug, daraxonrasib, was able to double the survival time of patients with pancreatic cancer.
Compared with patients who underwent chemotherapy, those treated with daraxonrasib not only lived longer, but also reported a better quality of life. The treatment also appeared to cause fewer severe side effects.
The study should be regarded as "a revolutionary breakthrough for patients with pancreatic cancer," said Dietrich Ruess, Deputy Medical Director and Head of the certified Pancreatic Cancer Center at the Department of General and Visceral Surgery at Freiburg University Medical Center.
"In my view, this is one of the most important clinical developments in metastatic pancreatic cancer in many years," said Dieter Saur, Professor of Translational Cancer Research at the Technical University of Munich and the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg.
Daraxonrasib targets the RAS gene
