Daily pill can double survival time for world’s deadliest cancer, trial shows | Pancreas cancer
A daily pill can double survival time in patients with the world’s deadliest cancer, according to the results of a clinical trial that experts are saying is a “gamechanger” and one of the biggest breakthroughs in decades. Currently, there are few treatments for pancreatic cancer, and most do little or nothing to help. For decades, scientists have worked relentlessly trying to find clever solutions for a form of cancer that is often found late. More than half of patients are only diagnosed after it has spread. Now experts at the world’s largest cancer conference are hailing the arrival of a smart drug called daraxonrasib, which they say could pave the way for a treatment revolution. In the trial of 500 patients, all of whom had pancreatic cancer that had spread, the pill doubled survival time, with fewer side-effects compared with chemotherapy. The findings were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (Asco) annual meeting in Chicago. Patients who took the drug lived substantially longer, for an average of 13.2 months, compared with 6.6 to …
