A new pancreatic cancer drug is offering hope for patients with this deadly disease after clinical trial data showed that daraxonrasib nearly doubled survival rates for study volunteers.

The lead investigator for the daraxonrasib clinical trial, Dr. Brian Wolpin, received a standing ovation from normally reserved researchers and doctors when he presented the “game-changing” study findings during the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago on May 31.

While cancer doctors and researchers have made great gains in finding new cures for other cancers, pancreatic cancer has been a stubborn and deadly foe. It’s the third-leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. and kills nearly 53,000 people each year.

Pancreatic cancer arises in the pancreas, most commonly in exocrine cells that play a vital role in digestion. Pancreatic adenocarcinoma often grows imperceptibly until it has spread widely. Once that happens, the average pancreatic patient lives less than a year.

But pancreatic cancer’s persistent, rapid lethality may finally be changing.

On May 1, medical experts at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration greenlit daraxonrasib for expanded access, and the drug appears to be on a fast track to full approval later this year. Daraxonrasib targets KRAS mutations, which drive the vast majority of pancreatic cancers.

AI is coming into play in both early detection and studies that characterize pancreatic cells and the environments in which they thrive, with the aim of finding vulnerabilities that future therapies can exploit. And there may even be potential for pancreatic cancer immunotherapies, a recent study indicates.

To learn more about new potential cures for pancreatic cancer, we spoke with Dr. Wells Messersmith, who cares for patients with pancreatic and other gastrointestinal cancers at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital. Messersmith, who heads the Medical Oncology division at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine, leads a research team focusing on developing personalized drugs to treat GI cancers, and he serves as an associate director at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, the only center designated as a comprehensive cancer center in Colorado by the National Cancer Institute.

Why is daraxonrasib, this new pancreatic cancer drug, getting so much attention?

“This will be the first efficacious targeted therapy for the majority of pancreatic cancer patients,” Messersmith said.

University of Colorado Hospital was among the sites of the daraxonrasib (pronounced da-RAX-on-RAS-ib) trial that ignited all the excitement. The patients involved all had advanced pancreatic cancer. The recently published study found that previously treated patients with advanced pancreatic cancer who took daraxonrasib pills once a day survived about 15 months; historically, these patients typically live less than half as long.

How daraxonrasib works against pancreatic cancer

The root cause of many cancers has to do with a malfunctioning on-off switch for cell growth. In healthy cells, the RAS cellular-growth pathway knows when to turn off. But with many cancers, a mutation occurs and the switch gets stuck in the “on” position, leading to uncontrolled, malignant cell growth. With pancreatic cancers, one RAS-associated protein in particular — KRAS — leads to that sticky switch in more than 90% of cases. Scientists have known about KRAS for years, but finding a good spot for a drug to bind and block its effects has proven difficult.

The scientists who developed daraxonrasib found a different target, Messersmith said. The drug binds RAS to a chaperone protein that then impacts KRAS proteins with any of the seven known cancer-causing mutations. That makes daraxonrasib pan-RAS inhibitor — not only a new drug, but the first of a new class of drugs, Messersmith said.

“That’s part of the reason why it’s so exciting,” Messersmith said.

As other drug companies learn from the breakthrough, they will probably develop variations on its theme, ones that are more effective and with fewer side effects, he said.

“A sort of arms race happens, which is good for patients, because competition means more access, more options, and also potential price competition down the line,” Messersmith said.

Is this the drug that former U.S. senator from Nebraska Ben Sasse is taking?

Yes. Sasse, 54, (who is not a UCHealth patient) started taking daraxonrasib after being diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer in December 2025. Doctors initially told Sasse that he only had three or months to live. Sasse called daraxonrasib a “miracle drug” during a number of media interviews this spring, noting that his tumor volume has shrunk by 76% since he began taking the drug.

Similar breakthroughs are emerging for some pancreatic cancer patients, including targeted therapies like zenocutuzumab, which has shown promise in certain cases.

When daraxonrasib could become widely available

The FDA granted Breakthrough Therapy and Orphan Drug designations quickly, and daraxonrasib is now permitted via the FDA’s expanded access treatment protocol. That makes the drug available to pancreatic cancer patients who have already gone through chemotherapy, but requires that the prescribing oncologist request permission from Revolution Medicines prior to giving it to patients.

The timing of full approval is unknown, but sometime later in 2026 is possible should no unfortunate surprises emerge in the meantime.

Daraxonrasib is also being studied for other solid-tumor cancers, and preliminary results look promising. There are also several trial arms that give advanced pancreatic cancer patients daraxonrasib as a first-line treatment alone (instead of standard chemotherapy), or in combination with standard chemotherapy, to measure the efficacy, Messersmith said.

Daraxonrasib side effects and what patients can expect

Yes. Most patients experience one or more of the following: rashes (sometimes severe); diarrhea, nausea, and inflammation of mucous membranes and around the fingernails. But, Messersmith said, “I’ve treated patients with this drug, and it’s actually fairly tolerable, so patients can preserve their quality of life.”

Also, he said, unlike most chemotherapy drugs — cytotoxics that kill dividing cells more indiscriminately — patients don’t end up losing their hair or having low blood counts.

“It’s not a cure, which is the ultimate goal,” Messersmith said. “But it adds substantial benefit with fairly manageable side effects.”

Could vaccines unlock new pancreatic cancer treatments?

For various reasons, pancreatic cancers largely haven’t responded to the immunotherapies that have revolutionized many types of cancer care. A team of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center researchers surgically removed tumors from 16 early-stage pancreatic cancer patients, characterized cancer cells in the tumors, and then customized an mRNA vaccine for each patient. The vaccine was designed to trigger an immune response against a patient’s particular cancer cells. The patients also underwent chemotherapy.

Sixteen patients did the trial. Eight responded to the mRNA vaccine; seven were still alive six years after treatment. Blood tests found the T-cells spawned by the mRNA vaccine present in all the survivors. Of the eight who did not respond to the vaccine, just two survived six years.

“It’s very promising,” Messersmith said, “and we are all eager for an immunotherapy to work in this disease.”

But he cautions, as do the study’s authors, that this was a small group of patients who also underwent surgery and chemotherapy, so the presence of the mRNA-customized T-cells can’t be definitely ascribed to the vaccine — at least not until larger studies confirm the results. A larger trial is in the works.

Other pancreatic-cancer vaccines could pan out, too, Messersmith said. Researchers at University of Colorado Anschutz were part of a colon-cancer study with biotech Elicio Therapeutics on a potential vaccine customized to a particular RAS mutation, and a larger trial is in the works, he said. That work could one day help pancreatic cancer patients.

“So, I’m very hopeful, because I think somehow getting the immune system to react to these cancers would be a great breakthrough,” Messersmith said.

How AI could help radiologists detect pancreatic cancer earlier

The AI model analyzed 2,000 “normal” abdominal CT scans, including ones from patients later diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The model identified 73% of those cancers about 16 months before diagnosis, which is about double the rate that radiologists found when reviewing the scans without AI assistance.

With cancer, early detection and treatment typically brings better outcomes. The issue here is in the practicality of widespread implementation.

Pancreatic cancer happens to about 14 in 10,000 people in the United States. A universal screening program would catch one nascent pancreatic cancer per more than 700 scans, each involving the costs and radiation doses of a CT scan to vital organs.

Messersmith sees the AI radiological study as promising, but, as he puts it, “Do I think everyone should run out and get a CAT scan? No.”

That said, millions of scans are done in the United States each year, and running abdominal scans done for other reasons through an AI engine to look for possible nascent pancreatic cancers could be a good idea, he said.

How UCHealth researchers are using AI to study pancreatic cancer

A $15 million gift from the Marsico family announced in September 2025 aims to develop AI and data science along a couple of pathways, Messersmith said. One is to characterize both individual pancreatic cancer cells and the microenvironment — a tumor consists of several cell types that interact with each other — in which pancreatic cancer cells grow. Another is to see how resistance to RAS inhibitors plays out at the molecular level, whether that’s primary resistance (the drug never works) or secondary resistance (the drug stops working).

“Our hope is that these AI-based approaches, where you’re doing billions of calculations, will allow us to find unique vulnerabilities and hopefully point the path forward to what types of combination strategies we should be looking at,” Messersmith said, alluding to applying more than one therapy — tailored vaccines, immunotherapies, chemotherapies — in tackling a pancreatic cancer case.

Advances in pancreatic cancer surgery offer new options

Using a Da Vinci surgical robot to minimize the collateral damage in Whipple procedures, which can cure some early-stage pancreatic cancer cases, has been happening at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital for years. More recently, surgeons’ heightened ability to more precisely remove cancerous tissues and reconnect arteries and veins has brought better outcomes, Messersmith said. CU Anschutz surgical oncology division chief Dr. Marco Del Chiaro is widely recognized as a pioneer on these fronts, Messersmith said, and those who have trained under del Chiaro, a professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine, are spreading that knowledge nationally and internationally.

“I would say one of the most exciting developments in my career over the last 20 years is to see these locally advanced cancers, which involve critical abdominal blood vessels and were not resectable in the past, and then somehow our surgeons work their magic and remove the tumor fully, which is just an amazing ability that’s quite unique here,” Messersmith said. “We have had many patients who were told they were not surgical candidates at other centers, and yet Dr. Del Chiaro and his team were able to remove the cancer with clear margins. It’s miraculous.”