Daraxonrasib Extends Median Survival by Six Months vs Chemotherapy in Previously Treated Advanced Pancreatic Cancer

A Phase III clinical trial of daraxonrasib enrolled 500 patients with advanced pancreatic cancer who had undergone previous therapy. Patients received either a daily daraxonrasib pill or standard intravenous chemotherapy. Half of patients on daraxonrasib lived 13 months or longer after treatment, while median survival for patients on chemotherapy was less than seven months.

Trial results were reported on May 31, 2026 at the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago. The trial results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine on May 31, 2026. Brian Wolpin of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston presented the new trial results.

Only about 1 percent of patients on daraxonrasib stopped taking it due to side effects, compared with 11 percent of patients on chemotherapy. The most common severe side effect of daraxonrasib was a rash, which occurred in nearly 14 percent of patients. Roughly 90 percent of patients on daraxonrasib develop some form of rash.

Side effects of daraxonrasib can include diarrhea, nausea, painful mouth inflammation and vomiting. The rash from daraxonrasib typically starts on the face and can flare across the scalp, chest and back. Shubham Pant, a medical oncologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and one of the trial’s investigators, said one patient’s pain eased enough to resume golfing.

Daraxonrasib is manufactured by Revolution Medicines, a biotech company in Redwood City, California. Daraxonrasib acts by first sticking to cyclophilin A, then the duo binds to and blocks RAS proteins. S.

Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved daraxonrasib, but the FDA has allowed Revolution Medicines to expand access to daraxonrasib beyond clinical trials for seriously ill pancreatic cancer patients with no other treatment options. About 60,000 new cases of pancreatic cancer are diagnosed in the United States each year.

Only 3 percent of people with advanced pancreatic cancer are still alive five years later.

An experimental mRNA cancer vaccine for pancreatic cancer is still in the early stages of testing.