How an 'Impossible' Idea Led to a Pancreatic Cancer Breakthrough

The new strategy also holds promise for lung and colon tumors. Here’s how scientists discovered it.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most dire diagnoses in medicine. There are few available treatments, and they do little to help. For decades, experimental drugs flopped in trials. Many researchers believed the biological obstacles could not be surmounted.

In what seems the blink of an eye, all that has changed. A drug nearing regulatory approval, daraxonrasib, is the first to substantially extend the lives of patients with pancreatic cancer. It works by targeting a cellular protein that fuels not just nearly all pancreatic tumors, but also many lung and colon cancers. Those three are the leading causes of cancer deaths.

Now, some scientists predict that the approach could wind up being the most significant advance in cancer treatment in 15 years, since the arrival of immunotherapy.

The long scientific journey that led to the drug is a triumph of both public and private research funding, succeeding only after decades of false starts and dashed hopes — and the unraveling of conventional wisdom that turned out to be completely wrong.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/health/pancreatic-cancer-daraxonrasib-kras.html?unlocked_article_code=1.h1A._xcB.VvBR5kav8Lxb&smid=url-share