The Pill That Learned a Second Trick

A drug approved just weeks ago for pancreatic cancer is now shrinking tumors in lung cancer patients too — a rare case of one medicine crossing the line between two of the deadliest cancers.

Earlier this week, researchers published results in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that daraxonrasib — a drug approved by the FDA just days earlier to treat advanced pancreatic cancer — is also shrinking tumors in patients with non-small cell lung cancer, the most common and deadliest form of the disease. It's an unusual kind of good news in oncology: a single therapy showing real promise against two cancers that, until recently, doctors considered almost entirely "undruggable."

Cracking a Decades-Old Lock

The trial gave 136 previously-treated lung cancer patients daily doses of daraxonrasib, marketed as Rasonque, in three-week cycles. Every patient carried a mutation in the RAS family of proteins — a class of genetic drivers found in some of the most aggressive cancers, including many lung, pancreatic, and colorectal tumors, and one that pharmaceutical researchers spent decades unable to target at all. More than 30% of patients saw their tumors shrink, with results improving at higher doses: 31% response at the lowest dose tested, climbing to 37% at the highest. The drug works as what scientists call a "molecular glue" — binding first to a common cellular protein, then using that combined structure to physically block RAS from sending the signals that drive tumor growth.

What makes this notable isn't just the tumor response — it's the speed and sequence. Just one week before this lung cancer data was published, the FDA approved the same drug for metastatic pancreatic cancer, a disease notorious for its resistance to treatment and its grim survival odds. Seeing a therapy cross so quickly from one hard-to-treat cancer into meaningful early results against another is rare, and it reflects a broader shift underway in cancer research: after RAS proteins were long dismissed as impossible to target, new "molecular glue" chemistry has turned them into one of the most active frontiers in oncology.

Scientific illustration of a molecule binding to and blocking a cancer-driving protein

Daraxonrasib works by binding to and blocking RAS proteins — long considered "undruggable" cancer drivers.

This was a small, early-phase trial, and researchers caution that a larger, randomized study comparing the drug directly against standard chemotherapy is still needed before it could be approved for lung cancer. But for a field that has spent a decade trying to turn "undruggable" proteins into treatable targets, this is a genuine milestone — proof that solving one of cancer's hardest problems in one disease can open doors in another.