Two Promising New Drugs Bring Hope to Pancreatic Cancer Patients

(SeaPRwire) –   Pancreatic cancer remains one of the most difficult diseases to treat. Although survival rates have improved since the 1970s, progress has stalled in recent years. However, two new investigational drugs each appear to double survival times.

On April 13, Revolution Medicines announced that its oral cancer drug, daraxonrasib, enabled patients to survive for an average of 13.2 months after beginning treatment, versus 6.7 months for those on standard chemotherapy. Dr. Mark Goldsmith, CEO of Revolution Medicines, described these as “dramatic results, with practice-changing outcomes” in an interview with TIME.

The next day, research backed by Actuate Therapeutics was published in Nature Medicine, indicating that the company’s pancreatic cancer drug, elraglusib, also doubled one-year survival rates compared to standard chemotherapy. Elraglusib is administered intravenously.

The findings from Revolution Medicines are based on a Phase III trial, and Goldsmith stated the company intends to submit them to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval. The company is also the first cancer drug developer to receive a Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher, ensuring the FDA will review the application on an accelerated schedule. Actuate’s research is from an earlier Phase II trial, and the company plans to continue testing the drug in larger patient groups.

Collectively, these outcomes offer significant hope for the pancreatic cancer community, which has historically had fewer treatment options than patients with other cancers. For instance, immunotherapies and personalized treatments based on tumor genetics have shown limited effectiveness against pancreatic cancer. Even seemingly modest survival improvements represent a crucial first step toward more substantial benefits. Dr. Eileen O’Reilly, a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center involved in the daraxonrasib studies, said the promising data “hopefully set the stage for building on targeted therapy as a major backbone for the treatment of pancreas cancer, and a key goal now is to build and extend these results in all stages.”

The oral drug daraxonrasib from Revolution Medicines works by targeting mutations in the KRAS gene, the first identified cancer-causing gene, which is known to drive many cancers. This gene regulates cell growth, and mutations can leave it permanently activated, resulting in uncontrolled growth. Goldsmith explained that daraxonrasib inhibits KRAS activity through a novel mechanism that blocks the KRAS protein. He noted that targeting this pathway is critical because “more than 90% of pancreatic tumors carry a mutation in RAS,” the gene family to which KRAS belongs. “If you’re not trying to inhibit RAS, you’re really not treating the cause of the disease.”

The company’s study enrolled patients with various KRAS mutations whose pancreatic cancer had progressed despite chemotherapy. Participants either took a daily daraxonrasib pill or received standard chemotherapy. Dr. Wungki Park, a pancreatic cancer specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center involved in early daraxonrasib trials, stated, “I’ve already told my colleagues that from today is an inflection point—that if things stays positive, everything should change. There will be pre-daraxonrasib and post-daraxonrasib. This is a really, really good outcome.”

Elraglusib combats pancreatic tumors through a different approach, inducing changes that slow tumor growth and make the tumor environment more receptive to therapies like chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Pancreatic tumors are typically resistant to immunotherapies due to fibrotic tissue that blocks immune cells. Dr. Devalingam Mahalingam, associate director of clinical research at Northwestern University’s comprehensive cancer center and the study’s lead author, said, “We started seeing immune-cell infiltration around the tumor when we treated with the drug.”

In the study, patients receiving a weekly IV infusion of elraglusib lived three months longer than those on chemotherapy and saw a 38% reduction in the risk of death during the approximately one-year study period. Mahalingam remarked, “Those [results] are rarely seen in pancreatic cancer.” The trial focused on recently diagnosed patients, who are most likely to respond, but earlier studies in patients with recurrent disease after chemotherapy also showed improvement, albeit less pronounced.

“We are not curing patients, unfortunately, but patients are living longer,” he said. “The goal of this is to give us new targets for therapeutics that may reverse the kinetics or growth of pancreatic tumors.” The company is now developing a pill version for daily dosing, similar to daraxonrasib, which Mahalingam said could maintain higher drug levels in the body.

Mahalingam suggested that combining promising candidates like elraglusib and daraxonrasib could yield even greater patient benefits. For example, pairing daraxonrasib, which targets the genetic drivers of the cancer, with elraglusib, which disrupts tumor cell growth, might extend survival beyond current limits. “We will hopefully get pancreatic cancer survival beyond a year on average for most patients,” he said.

Goldsmith said his company is already evaluating daraxonrasib in newly diagnosed pancreatic cancer patients and expects to present results at the upcoming American Association of Cancer Research meeting. His team is also studying the drug in combination with surgery. “We are investing heavily across all lines of treatment, with multiple compounds and multiple treatment strategies,” he said. “We want to address everybody with pancreatic cancer.”