Doctors today hailed a breakthrough in the fight against pancreatic cancer after a new drug was shown to give patients precious extra months of life.
The treatment, daraxonrasib, is the first medicine able to target the genetic mutation that drives 90 per cent of cases – something scientists have spent decades trying to achieve.
Early results show the once daily pill can double survival for people with the deadliest form of the disease.
Experts said the ‘unprecedented’ findings marked a turning point in the fight against the disease, which is one of the hardest cancers to treat.
Around 10,500 people in the UK are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer every year and more than half of patients die within three months of diagnosis, because most cases are only spotted once the disease is advanced, and has spread.
Until now, highly toxic chemotherapy has been the only treatment option available for these patients.
But those given daraxonrasib – which belongs to a new class of drugs called RAS inhibitors, designed to shut down cancer cells driven by mutant proteins – lived twice as long without the disease worsening as those receiving standard care.
RAS inhibitors have already been hailed by scientists as one of the most significant breakthroughs in treatment for its success in treating certain lung cancers.
The once daily pill was shown to double the life expectancy of pancreatic cancer patients, with experts hailing the drug as ‘landscape changing’
Experts at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago, where the findings were unveiled today, said the results show that ‘the landscape is now changing for pancreatic cancer patients’.
Dr Brian Wolpin, trial lead from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute said: ‘It is exciting that we may soon be able to help patients with metastatic [advanced] pancreatic cancer in ways we haven’t been able to before, improving both survival and quality of life.’
Scientists have long known that a mutation in a gene called KRAS drives nine out of ten cases, yet until now there have been no drugs able to target the problem directly.
‘KRAS has always been the great white whale of oncology,’ Dr George Sledge, chief medical officer at Caris Life Sciences, who wasn’t involved in the trial, said.
‘We’ve always thought if there was a way we could turn off this target, we would be able to treat the untreatable.’
The trial involved 500 patients, with an average age of 66, from North America, Europe and Asia with advanced pancreatic cancer who had previously received treatment.
Just under half of patients received daraxonrasib whilst the remaining patients were given chemotherapy.
The average survival was just over a year in the daraxonrasib group whilst those on chemotherapy lived for just 6.6 months following treatment.
Daraxonrasib also caused fewer serious side effects than chemotherapy – which resulted in 11 per cent of patients stopping treatment.
Dr Rachna Shroff, an ASCO expert in gastrointestinal cancers, who was not involved in the study, labelled the findings ‘revolutionary’.
She said: ‘We are seeing unprecedented survival and efficacy in second-line treatment with an expected safety profile.
‘The RAS revolution is here, and this study is proof of principle that targeting KRAS in pancreatic cancer is feasible and effective.’
Dr Sledge added: ‘This trial offers a real ray of hope. The early data suggests the first active drug we’ve had in pancreatic cancer making it, for the very first time, a truly responsive and treatable disease.’
Experts at Cancer Research UK welcomed the findings saying the drug could give patients more precious time with their loved ones.
‘Although survival has improved for many cancers over the past few decades, pancreatic cancer has not seen the same gains, in part because it is often diagnosed at a late stage.
‘A treatment that could double survival in this disease would be unprecedented,’ Dr Samuel Godfrey, the charity’s research lead said.
The data from the trial will now be submitted to regulators in the US and eventually the UK with the aim of getting the drug approved.
A spokesperson from Revolution Medicine, who funded the trial, said they are ‘committed’ to bringing daraxonrasib as quickly as possible to patients given the ‘significant unmet need in pancreatic cancer.’
Dr Wolpin concluded: ‘It is a targeted therapy that we expect to be relevant to all patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer.
‘Were this drug to be approved, it would mark a dramatic shift in how pancreatic cancer is treated.’
