'Surprising results' for Revolution Medicine's pancreatic cancer drug

Adam Feuerstein is a senior writer and biotechnology columnist, reporting on the intersection of drug development, business, Wall Street, and biotechnology. He is co-host of the weekly biotech podcast The Readout Loud and author of the newsletter Adam’s Biotech Scorecard. Signal’s Adam can be reached at stataf.54.

CHICAGO — Rachna Shroff, a physician and pancreatic cancer expert, was seeing patients at the University of Arizona Cancer Center in April when she heard surprising clinical results about an experimental drug called dalaxone lasib. Patients who took the targeted drug lived almost twice as long as those who received standard chemotherapy. This result was unprecedented in the field of pancreatic cancer.

“I’ve been treating pancreatic cancer for 16 years, and I actually started crying in the clinic,” Shroff said at a media briefing. “This is research that will have a huge impact on patients.”

Detailed results from the daraxone lasib clinical trial conducted by drug maker Revolution Medicines, a biotechnology company, were presented Sunday at the plenary session of the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting here. The study was also published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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