When the leader of the Catholic Archdiocese in Chicago was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1995, a local TV station called the American Cancer Society to say they’d like to speak with a survivor. The cancer society said it would too. That’s how hopeless the disease was. Today, UVA oncologist Matthew Reilley says it can sometimes be cured.
“If you manage to catch the pancreatic cancer fairly early, then with aggressive chemotherapy and a surgery called the Whipple procedure, sometimes we can cure it, but in the majority of cases, there’s no cure, and the treatment for many decades has just been chemotherapy," he concludes.
And even with treatment, the average patient with an advanced case survives for less than 12 months, but this year when Reilley attended the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting, scientists shared the results of a large-scale trial for a new drug called Daraxonrasib.
"This study, when it was presented, got two separate standing ovations. It was pretty well recognized by everyone there that this was a big deal."
For one thing, it doubled life expectancy from six and a half months on average to more than a year."
"What it showed in the patients who either got randomized to chemo or this drug was that the patients who got this drug did much better in terms of survival, and the side effects tend to be pretty well tolerated compared to chemo."
And it's taken as a pill rather than an infusion, but what’s really got doctors excited is the promise of future treatments because of the way Daraxonrasib works.
"We know that the vast majority of pancreatic cancer patients have a mutation in a gene called KRAS that helps cells to survive and grow more quickly, so it’s not surprising that cancer would take advantage of that."
This new drug targets the mutated KRAS gene, found in 90% of pancreatic tumors, and it could treat other forms of cancer.
"This is the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot of excitement in this area, both in pancreatic cancer where this mutation is present in about 90% of patients, but even in colon cancer where about 50% of patients have this mutation, or lung cancer where it’s close to a third of patients, there’s a lot of hope that these will help to improve quality of life and time for patients."
And the drug could help shrink tumors, making it possible to remove them through surgery.
" If they can just get their cancer a little smaller, can we push them over that edge and get them to a point of cure?"
The drug is not yet approved by the FDA, but UVA has a couple of clinical trials underway, and it joins other medical centers in working with the manufacturer— Revolution Medicine— to expand access.
