05/22/2026
In a family of killer diseases, pancreatic cancer has long been one of the scariest. It could grow undetected for years, and by the time most people knew something was wrong, their prognosis was grim.
The vast majority of patients, nearly 90%, would die within the first five years of their diagnosis. Even as other cancers saw their mortality rates drop in recent years, pancreatic cancer’s death rate actually increased slightly from 1999 to 2020.
And despite their best efforts, scientists felt stuck. In the 1980s, they identified a gene, KRAS, that seemed to be pivotal to the uncontrolled cell growth that drove the disease’s development. But over and over again, most treatments in clinical trials failed.
But recent breakthroughs have brought what once seemed impossible within reach. A group of researchers is preparing to publish results from their clinical trial, already reported in the New York Times, that found a KRAS-targeting pill called daraxonrasib roughly doubled survival, from seven months to 13 on average, among a group of patients who had metastatic pancreatic cancer and had already tried chemotherapy.
“For the first time, there is some optimism in this disease,” Dr. Anirban Maitra, director of NYU Langone’s Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center and a longtime pancreatic cancer researcher, said.
We are getting closer to being able to diagnose and treat pancreatic cancer with remarkable precision. Find out what it will take to get all the way there — and what everyone should know — here: https://www.vox.com/good-medicine-newsletter/489324/pancreatic-cancer-treatment-survival-cause-cure?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dhfacebook&utm_content=app.dashsocial.com%2Fvoxdotcom%2Flibrary%2Fmedia%2F675642272