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“Game changer.” “Historic.” “Monumental.”
Doctors, scientists and patients have showered breathless accolades upon a new pancreatic cancer treatment hailed as “revolutionary.”
It’s reasonable to be suspicious of such effusive excitement. You’ll often hear the same kind of praise used to market products that fall well short of the hype.
But the highly anticipated clinical trial results revealed this week provide very strong evidence that, for the drug called daraxonrasib, “breakthrough” is entirely merited.
“Compared to standard chemotherapy, daraxonrasib nearly doubled overall survival,” writes Christopher Lieu, a gastrointestinal oncologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz. Overall, the drug “reduced the risk of death for metastatic pancreatic cancer patients by 60%.”
For decades, pancreatic cancer was considered “undruggable.” Patients at the advanced stage of the disease have notoriously slim odds of survival, and most don’t live beyond a year. But scientists have figured out a way to target the mechanism driving pancreatic cancer. And, as Lieu writes, “this milestone represents a likely shift” in how doctors and researchers will be approaching this disease for years to come.
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