A daily pill called daraxonrasib has doubled survival time for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, a result that researchers described as a major step forward for a disease that has long resisted meaningful treatment. In a trial of 500 people whose cancer had spread, those taking the drug lived an average of 13.2 months, compared with 6.6 to 6.7 months for patients given chemotherapy.

The findings were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago, where they drew immediate attention because pancreatic cancer remains one of the deadliest cancers and still leaves doctors with few good options. Dr. Rachna Shroff, who has spent 16 years treating the disease, said she started crying in clinic after reading the trial results and called them landscape-changing, saying they represented unprecedented survival for her patients.

Daraxonrasib matters because it goes after Kras, the protein that drives nearly all pancreatic cancers, including the most common form, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. More than 90% of patients with that disease have a Kras gene mutation, which is one reason the field has spent decades trying to find a drug that could finally make a difference. The pill is described as a Ras(On) multi-selective inhibitor, and the trial was led by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

Just as important, the drug did more than extend life. The trial found fewer side effects than with chemotherapy, a meaningful detail in a cancer where many treatments do little or nothing to help and where many patients are first diagnosed only after the disease has already spread. That combination of longer survival and better tolerability is what made Dr. Julie Gralow call the study a gamechanger and led Paula Hanford to say it was one of the most significant developments in treatment she had ever seen.

The result is the clearest sign yet that a targeted drug can move pancreatic cancer treatment beyond the thin set of options that has defined the disease for years. What remains unanswered is the step patients care about most next: whether daraxonrasib will move from a headline result at ASCO to routine use in clinics, and how quickly that could happen.