‘Stunning results’ for Revolution Medicines pancreatic cancer drug

Adam Feuerstein is a senior writer and biotech columnist, reporting on the crossroads of drug development, business, Wall Street, and biotechnology. He is also a co-host of the weekly biotech podcast The Readout Loud and author of the newsletter Adam’s Biotech Scorecard. You can reach Adam on Signal at stataf.54.

CHICAGO — Rachna Shroff, a physician and pancreatic cancer expert, was seeing patients at the University of Arizona Cancer Center in April when she heard the striking clinical results about an experimental pill called daraxonrasib. Patients taking the targeted drug lived nearly twice as long as patients offered standard chemotherapy — an outcome never seen before in the pancreatic cancer field. 

“Having treated pancreatic cancer for 16 years, I actually started crying in the clinic,” Shroff said at a media briefing. “This is such an incredibly impactful study for our patients.”

On Sunday, detailed results from the daraxonrasib clinical trial conducted by the drug’s maker, the biotech company Revolution Medicines, were presented here at the plenary session of the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The study was published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine.