08/27/2026
The FDA just approved a new drug that doubles the survival rate of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. This breakthrough is thanks to the work of several AAU member universities.
Daraxonrasib targets a mutated cellular protein known as KRAS, which was first discovered in the 1980s by researchers at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). For decades, scientists believed that KRAS would not respond to drugs.
This changed when researchers Kevin Shokat of University of California, San Francisco and Greg Verdine of Harvard proved that KRAS could be targeted. Their research was further advanced by a company, Revolution, that was born at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Clinical trials of daraxonrasib were conducted at multiple AAU universities, including UCLA and Columbia University
Now, daraxonrasib will be widely available to patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer — one of the deadliest forms of the disease. The drug illustrates how fundamental research performed at America's research universities, with support from federal funding, can lead to revolutionary treatments.
In a key clinical trial, patients who got the pill, daraxonrasib, lived twice as long as those who got chemotherapy.
