FDA Approves First KRAS-Targeted Pancreatic Cancer Drug — SkimNews
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- FDA approved daraxonrasib in late August for previously treated pancreatic cancer patients, a therapy developed by Revolution Medicines.
- Daraxonrasib targets KRAS, the most commonly mutated oncogene in pancreatic cancer, a target medicine had known about for decades but considered nearly impossible to treat due to its physical shape.
- Revolution Medicines developed daraxonrasib as the first therapy to prove KRAS could be bound, treated, and stopped inside pancreatic tumors.
- The clinical trial showed daraxonrasib nearly doubled the survival rate for previously treated pancreatic cancer patients.
- KRAS mutations in pancreatic cancer are typically a very bad prognostic sign, often indicating the patient's case is terminal.
Why it matters: For the roughly subset of pancreatic cancer patients whose tumors carry a KRAS mutation — historically a near-terminal diagnosis — daraxonrasib's near-doubling of survival marks the first crack in a decades-long treatment wall. Revolution Medicines now holds the only FDA-approved KRAS-targeted therapy for pancreatic cancer, opening a new therapeutic class for an oncogene that medicine had deemed untreatable because of its physical shape.
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