New pancreatic cancer drug doubles survival in phase 3 trial

A daily pill from Revolution Medicines nearly doubled survival for patients with previously treated metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, the deadliest common form of pancreatic cancer. In the phase 3 RASolute 302 trial, daraxonrasib extended median overall survival to 13.2 months, compared with 6.7 months for standard intravenous chemotherapy, a gap that amounts to roughly six and a half additional months for the typical patient.

That difference matters because pancreatic cancer remains one of the hardest cancers to treat and the third leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Daraxonrasib is not another cytotoxic drug that attacks fast-growing cells the way chemotherapy does. It is a RAS(ON) inhibitor, designed to block the RAS signaling pathway in its active state, which is a central driver of tumor growth in more than 90% of pancreatic cancers. For patients, that makes the drug more than a modest tweak to existing treatment: it points to a new way of targeting the disease biology itself.

Revolution Medicines said the global, randomized study enrolled about 500 patients and met both its primary and key secondary endpoints, including progression-free survival and overall survival. The company said the drug was generally well tolerated and showed no new safety signals. That safety profile is especially important in pancreatic cancer, where patients often begin treatment already weakened by pain, weight loss and disease spread to the liver or other organs.

The practical signal may be as important as the survival data. Reports from the trial said some patients had less pain, better quality of life and stayed on treatment longer than those receiving chemotherapy. Researchers also noted that some tumors shrank enough to raise questions about whether the drug could move earlier in the treatment course or eventually help more patients become eligible for surgery, though those uses would require more study.

The results, presented at the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago, drew unusually strong reactions from oncologists, including Brian M. Wolpin of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Zev Wainberg of UCLA and Rachna Shroff of the University of Arizona Cancer Center. Ben Sasse also brought public attention to the drug after describing less pain and better quality of life while receiving it through expanded access. The Food and Drug Administration later issued a “safe to proceed” letter for an expanded access protocol, and Revolution Medicines said it intends to pursue a future submission to regulators. For a disease with few randomized trials showing broad survival benefit, daraxonrasib looks less like a cure than a potentially real shift in treatment.