Jeff Geschwind: How a New Pancreatic Cancer Drug Signals Progress in Oncology Research
Jeff Geschwind, MD, is an interventional oncologist and internationally recognized liver cancer expert with more than 25 years of experience in the field. He currently serves as Medical Director of Oncology, Image-Guided Therapy, and Imaging Core Lab at NAMSA, a leading contract research organization, and as a Medical Advisor for HistoSonics, a company developing non-invasive, ultrasound-based cancer therapy. Jeff Geschwind has led or co-led more than 50 clinical trials evaluating new therapeutic strategies for liver cancer and previously chaired the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at Yale University School of Medicine after years on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His research into tumor metabolism led him to co-found Cage Pharma, and he continues to consult for Philips Healthcare on interventional oncology. As researchers pursue new targeted cancer therapies, specialists familiar with drug development, like Dr. Geschwind, offer useful context on how such breakthroughs move from trials toward patient care.
A new drug for pancreatic cancer is providing patients with hope following promising results from a clinical trial where the drug, daraxonrasib, almost doubled patient survival. Lead investigator Dr. Brian Wolpin presented his findings at the recently concluded 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago to a standing ovation.
During the last couple of decades, oncologists and cancer researchers have made great strides improving treatments and patient outcomes across various cancer types. However, pancreatic cancer has proven to be especially resistant to new therapies and it remains one of the most highly lethal cancers with very poor overal 5-year survival rates.
In the United States, pancreatic cancer ranks as the third leading cause of cancer death, accounting for almost 53,000 deaths each year. In most cases, the disease develops in pancreatic exocrine cells, which are critical to digestive processes.
Pancreatic cancer typically causes minimal symptoms, growing imperceptibly and insidiously until it has spread widely throughout the body, at which point patients have an average survival rate of less than 12 months. The development of daraxonrasib may change those outcomes significantly.
Daraxonrasib which is still an investigational drug not yet approved by the FDA, targets RAS mutations including those affecting the KRAS gene, itself a key hallmark of pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Such RAS mutations were previously thought to be “undruggable”, yet are present in over 90% of all pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas.
Dr. Wells Messersmith, a pancreatic and gastrointestinal cancer specialist at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, described daraxonrasib as a “game changer” because it is the first effective targeted therapy against most cases of pancreatic cancer. Dr. Messersmith had the opportunity to personally observe the effect of the drug on patients he treated with the experimental drug, as the University of Colorado Hospital served as one of the trial sites.
During the study conducted in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, daraxonrasib was administered orally once daily. The resulting overall patient survival at 15 months was more than twice that of the current standard of care therapy.
As is the case with most cancers, pancreatic cancer involves a cellular malfunction that results in unchecked cellular growth. In pancreatic cancer, specifically, the mutation occurs in KRAS protein cells in over 90 percent of cases.
Although the KRAS mutation present in pancreatic cancers has been known for several years, developing a drug that effectively binds to the protein and blocks its harmful effects was a monumental achievement.
Dr. Wolpin’s team took an alternative approach. Instead of focusing on KRAS proteins, they took a step back and targeted the associated RAS cellular-growth pathway and introduced a chaperone protein.
This new protein had a widespread effect on the pathway, which included KRAS proteins and each of the seven possible mutations that can lead to pancreatic cancer. In this way, daraxonrasib represents not just a new cancer drug, but a completely new class of cancer treatments.
As more information about the drug and pre-clinical studies become available, others will build on Dr. Wolpin’s success and are likely to develop even more effective therapies with fewer side effects. “That’s part of the reason why it’s so exciting,” Messersmith explained.
The US Food and Drug Administration greenlit expanded access to daraxonrasib in May 2026. The drug is on schedule to receive full approval before the end of the year.
The drug is not the only reason for optimism when it comes to effective pancreatic cancer treatments. In addition, artificial intelligence has demonstrated the ability to improve early detection and enhance pancreatic cell studies.
Meanwhile, additional research suggests that doctors might soon be able to treat pancreatic cancer using immunotherapies. As a result, one can hope that such emerging treatments will be able to finally improve outcomes of patients with pancreatic cancer.
About Jeff Geschwind
Jeff Geschwind, MD, is a world-renowned interventional oncologist specializing in liver cancer treatment and research. He serves as Medical Director of Oncology, Image-Guided Therapy, and Imaging Core Lab at NAMSA and as a Medical Advisor for HistoSonics, while also consulting for Philips Healthcare and Cage Pharma, which he founded. Formerly a professor at Johns Hopkins and chairman at Yale University School of Medicine, he has led more than 50 clinical trials and earned numerous honors, including the Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen Honorary Award from the European Society of Radiology.
