A promising new drug could be a game-changer for those facing one of the deadliest cancers.
Daraxonrasib showed promising results in a clinical trial led by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The drug was tested on 168 patients with advanced “pancreatic cancer whose tumors had mutations in the RAS gene. All study participants had previously received at least one chemotherapy treatment,” Fox News reported.
Daraxonrasib is taken as a daily pill and is intended to block cancer signals to the RAS gene and carries certain side effects like rashes, mouth inflammation, nausea and diarrhea.
Roughly 90% of the patients taking daraxonrasib saw their cancer either shrink or stop growing, according to Fox.
“If supported by data from future clinical trials, saraxonrasib would be a targeted therapy relevant to nearly all patients with advanced pancreatic cancer,” he said.
Dr. Brian Wolpin, director of the Hale Family Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research at Dana-Farber, stated in a press release.
“This trial provides the first published data showing the safety and broad activity of a RAS(ON) multi-selective inhibitor in pancreatic cancer,” Wolpin went on. “If it proves effective in larger clinical trials, it would signify a substantial shift in how this disease is treated.”
Wolpin told Fox News Digital that the drug is “one of the most promising therapy advances we’ve seen in pancreatic cancer.”
“The study also showed disease control in approximately 90% of patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer, which is extremely exciting,” he added, stating that pancreatic cancer has had “very few effective therapies” in the past.
Although the side effects of daraxonrasib are common, Wolpin said most patients felt enduring them was well worth it, and “very few patients needed to stop therapy due to side effects.”
“The study did not include a randomized control arm that directly compared daraxonrasib with chemotherapy,” he said. “That being said, the results for daraxonrasib looked substantially better than what we have seen in prior clinical trials of chemotherapy in patients with previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer.”
“Pancreatic cancer remains a challenging disease, and additional research is needed to determine how best to sequence or combine therapies to provide the most durable responses and cures,” he said.
The drug is in early-stage studies and is on its way to larger phase 3 trials, Fox reported.
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