Pancreatic Cancer Drug Daraxonrasib Shows Early Promise Shrinking Tumors In Lung Cancer Trial

NEW YORK — A drug approved just last week to treat advanced pancreatic cancer is already showing early signs it could help patients battling the world's deadliest cancer, with a new clinical trial finding the medication shrank tumors in more than 30% of lung cancer patients who received it.

The drug, daraxonrasib, sold under the brand name Rasonque, was developed by Revolution Medicines, a biotechnology company based in Redwood City, California. Results from the early-phase trial were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, just one week after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug for treating metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma in patients who had already received at least one prior systemic therapy.

In the trial, researchers gave 136 patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, the most common form of the disease, daily doses of daraxonrasib for three weeks at a time. Every patient enrolled had previously tried other cancer therapies with little to no success and carried mutations in RAS proteins, a family of genes known to drive tumor growth across multiple cancer types. The drug was found to be safe while reducing tumor burden in more than 30% of participants overall.

Results varied somewhat by dosage level. Among patients who received the lowest dose tested, 31% saw their tumors shrink. That figure rose to 34% among patients in the middle dosage group, and climbed further to 37% among those who received the highest dose studied.

Dr. Kathryn Arbour, a thoracic medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who led the trial, described the significance of daraxonrasib's broad activity against the many different forms RAS mutations can take within lung cancer patients.

"Daraxonrasib is the first time we've had a therapy that can target all the different KRAS mutations we find in lung cancer," Arbour said.

RAS proteins, and the KRAS mutation specifically, have long been considered among the most difficult targets in cancer treatment. KRAS acts as a kind of molecular on-off switch regulating cell growth and division, and for decades scientists regarded the mutated protein as effectively "undruggable" because of the physical structure of the molecule, which made it extremely difficult to bind with conventional medications.

Daraxonrasib overcomes that challenge through a novel mechanism researchers describe as a "molecular glue." Rather than attempting to bind directly to RAS, the drug first attaches to a common cellular protein called cyclophilin A. The resulting combined structure creates a surface capable of binding to both normal and mutated RAS molecules, blocking them from interacting with the other proteins they would typically need in order to drive continued tumor growth. Because this approach targets a broad range of RAS mutations rather than just one specific variant, daraxonrasib has shown activity against a wider array of patients and cancer types than earlier-generation RAS-targeted drugs, including rare mutation variants and cancers that have evolved to evade other treatments.

The drug's pancreatic cancer approval came unusually quickly. The FDA granted daraxonrasib approval on Aug. 26, more than six months ahead of the regulatory decision date Revolution Medicines had originally anticipated. That accelerated timeline followed a "Breakthrough Therapy" designation the FDA granted the drug in June 2025, a status reserved for treatments addressing serious conditions that show preliminary evidence of substantial improvement over existing available therapies. The pancreatic cancer application was also reviewed under the FDA's Commissioner's National Priority Voucher Program, a mechanism designed to further expedite review of especially promising treatments.

The underlying pancreatic cancer data that supported the drug's approval proved striking. In a late-stage clinical trial involving 500 patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, daraxonrasib nearly doubled median overall survival, extending it to more than 13 months, compared with a median survival of approximately 6.7 months among patients receiving standard chemotherapy. Results from that trial, first presented at the 2026 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, reportedly drew a 30-second standing ovation from attendees, according to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, before being published concurrently in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death worldwide, making daraxonrasib's newly reported activity against the disease particularly significant to oncologists tracking the drug's broader potential beyond its initial approved use. Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering noted that Revolution Medicines has continued developing related compounds targeting the same cancer-driving mutations implicated in pancreatic, lung and colorectal cancers, reflecting a broader industry push to expand RAS-targeted therapies across multiple tumor types simultaneously.

Daraxonrasib is not the only RAS-targeted therapy to show promise across multiple cancer types in recent months. Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering have separately studied a related KRAS-degrading drug called setidegrasib, with results published in March 2026 also in the New England Journal of Medicine, showing promising activity in both pancreatic and lung cancer. Other researchers at the same institution have led trials of a separate KRAS-targeting drug, adagrasib, that resulted in the first FDA approval of a KRAS-directed therapy for colorectal cancer, underscoring the rapidly expanding landscape of treatments now targeting this once-considered-undruggable family of cancer-driving mutations.

Despite the encouraging early results in lung cancer, researchers cautioned that the current findings stem from a relatively small, early-phase trial rather than the kind of large, randomized late-stage study that would typically be required to support a formal regulatory approval for that specific use of the drug. Larger confirmatory studies are now underway to further validate daraxonrasib's activity in lung cancer patients with RAS mutations, following a similar development pathway to the one that led to the drug's recent pancreatic cancer approval.

For now, daraxonrasib's approval remains limited specifically to metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma in patients who have already tried at least one prior systemic treatment. Whether the drug eventually receives a formal expanded approval covering lung cancer will depend on the results of those larger, ongoing trials, though the early data published this week has already generated significant interest among oncologists given the drug's demonstrated ability to target a notably broad range of cancer-driving RAS mutations across different tumor types.