A new drug for pancreas cancer may be a game changer, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:09 — 1.6MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Daraxonrasib is the name of a drug to treat pancreas cancer that has extended survival in many with the disease, a just reported clinical trial finds.  Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson says it’s gotten many people who treat the disease cautiously optimistic. 

Nelson: Just within the last several years there have been enough advances in the way we design and create drugs to create drugs that are active at selectively stopping the rash proteins that are driving cancers and one of them is very commonly present in majority of pancreas cancers when this drug is used so far it looks very very promising there's a fair sized clinical trial that's 500 people in it and it looks like the median survival was as much as doubled so it's a significant advance particularly in the setting of pancreas cancer.        :33

In addition to prolonging survival time, daraxonrasib is also an oral medication and it’s associated with far fewer side effects than chemotherapy. Nelson notes that like agents are in development. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.