For nearly twenty years, doctors treating advanced pancreatic cancer had little new to offer patients. The same chemotherapy treatments, the same sad results: patients lived only a few months on average. Then, on April 13, 2026, a small biotech company in Redwood City, California, announced something different: a new daily pill.
The drug is called daraxonrasib. According to recent reports, it doubled how long patients lived compared with chemotherapy. In the Phase 3 trial called RASolute 302, patients taking the pill lived for a median of 13.2 months, while those receiving chemotherapy lived 6.7 months. This means the pill reduced the risk of death by roughly 60%.
Wall Street understood how important this was immediately. Shares of Revolution Medicines, the company that makes the drug, increased about 40% the next morning.
Why is this discovery so exciting? More than 90% of pancreatic cancers carry a mutation in RAS proteins, which cause uncontrolled cell growth. Earlier drugs only worked on one rare type of RAS mutation. Daraxonrasib, however, targets multiple RAS variants that are common in pancreatic cancer.
The trial enrolled approximately 501 adults with advanced pancreatic cancer who had already received previous treatment. Half received the new pill once daily; half received standard chemotherapy. Side effects were generally manageable, with rash being the most common complaint.
Revolution Medicines plans to submit the data to the FDA using a special fast-track program that could reduce review time from 10-12 months to just 1-2 months. The company is also running additional trials to test the drug in earlier treatment stages. For patients facing this serious disease, 13.2 months represents hope that doctors have waited decades to offer.