Pancreatic cancer is among the deadliest cancers. A new drug being tested at Penn is giving patients and doctors hope.
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Key Points:
- Irene Blair, a 59-year-old pancreatic cancer patient, has experienced significant improvement after starting treatment with daraxonrasib, a new KRAS inhibitor drug being tested in clinical trials at Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center.
- Daraxonrasib targets KRAS and related proteins that drive aggressive cancers, and early trial results show it can double survival time for many pancreatic cancer patients, increasing median survival from about seven months to 15.6 months.
- The drug is not a cure but represents the first major advancement in decades for pancreatic cancer, which has the highest mortality rate of all cancers, with only 13% of patients surviving five years post-diagnosis.
- Side effects of daraxonrasib are generally manageable
