Daily pill can double survival time for deadliest cancer, trial shows

Herodotus38

Source article for those interested: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2505783 Paywalled but has a free access option if you make an account.

maxall4

Paper: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2605555?query=fe...

amluto

Derek Lowe’s writeup is good: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/progress-against-p...

chilldsgn

I hope they can get this to people quickly. Someone I love has been diagnosed with stage 3 end of Feb this year and it's utter hell. For everyone, not just the patient.

StephenAmar

If you want to see what the side effects look like, look at ex Senator Ben Sasse: https://youtu.be/7CFo6-6BN9k?si=2B3dqB4rOhAnPiZl

rvnx

The founders of Lovable and Builder.ai individually received more funds than the whole group of the researchers behind this medicine...

mrandish

Totally naive question: is this a situation where stacking the drug with chemo might be even better?

modzu

"survival" is the wrong word; its terminal. honestly the drugs and chemo and treatments they put pancreatic patients through for possibly a few more (not very nice) weeks is almost criminal. a good doctor will tell you to go make the most of those 3 months post diagnosis. that said its nice to see progress against one of the worst cancers out there and i hope it leads to genuine breakthroughs. but this drug is nothing anybody wants, even if they think they do

ltbarcly3

While it's a useful scientific achievement, and I am not second guessing any individuals decision, and any time is likely tempting to take if even to have time to make arrangements, this still only gives about 1 year survival on average to the scenario being quoted in the title, and that year is gruesomely painful.

siva7

> More than 90% of patients with the most common form of pancreatic cancer, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (mPDAC), have a mutation in the Kras gene. So pancreatic cancer is basically a genetic disease for most patients instead of environmental?

HDBaseT

Why would you want to double the survival time for cancer cells?