Two pancreatic cancer treatments show promise in clinical trials, New York Times maintains

Two experimental drugs are bringing hope to patients with deadly pancreatic cancer.

According to a recent story by Gina Kolata and Rebecca Robbins in The New York Times, clinical trials show promise for daraxonrasib and a personalized vaccine that employs mRNA technology, best known for its use in Covid-19 vaccines.

 

Researchers presented data supporting this conclusion at a San Diego cancer conference, but neither drug has yet been approved for use. Nor has the data “been published in a medical journal or reviewed by regulators,” the article reveals.

 

Pancreatic cancer kills more than 50,000 Americans each year. “Many patients die within a year of diagnosis, and only 13% of people live for five years after being diagnosed,” the piece says.

Dr. Robert Vonderheide

 Kolata and Robbins quote Dr. Robert Vonderheide, director of the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, as saying “the statistic that caught everyone’s eye was a doubling of overall survival…To see that effect with a side-effect profile that is manageable unleashed a lot of excitement  in the field.”

Vonderheide wasn’t involved in the new research but is president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research, the group of oncologists and scientists that hosted the California meeting.

 

Initial findings of the clinical trials were that daraxonrasib gave patients “over 13 months, compared to less than seven months for those who received chemotherapy.”

 

Pancreatic cancer, the story notes, “is different from many other cancers,” Kolata and Robbins maintain. “It is often caught very late, when the disease has already spread widely, because it often presents no early symptoms.…And treatment approaches like immunotherapy that have transformed the outlook for other cancers have not worked for that of the pancreas.”

 

More information on clinical trials and new drugs can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten aimed at male caregivers. My other books are MysteryDates — How to keep the sizzle in your relationship; The Roving I, a compilation of 70 of my newspaper columns; and Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical fantasy intended for 6- to 10-year-olds that I co-authored with my then 8-year-old granddaughter. Check out my website at https://woodyweingarten.com for details.