After new drug’s ‘unprecedented’ results for pancreatic cancer, doctors look at other uses

The experimental drug daraxonrasib, which doubled survival time in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, may also prove effective for lung, colon and ovarian cancers.

Every single patient with advanced pancreatic cancer who walked into Dr. Zev Wainberg’s office told him they would rather take an experimental medication than endure another round of chemotherapy.

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Wainberg, co-director of UCLA Health’s GI Oncology Program, was leading a clinical trial of a new drug called daraxonrasib. All the study participants previously had chemotherapy that was starting to fail.

“Statistically, I knew only half of them get the pill, and we don’t get to choose,” Wainberg said. “I put a lot of patients on the chemo arm, and none of them are alive anymore.”