Cancer Research Just Had One of Its Best Weeks in Decades

Three separate, significant cancer breakthroughs dropped in the span of days. The mainstream press covered each one in isolation, buried the specifics, and missed the bigger picture entirely.

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The Pancreatic Cancer News Is the Biggest

Pancreatic cancer kills roughly 70,000 Americans every year, according to NPR. About 80% of those patients are diagnosed at late stage. The five-year survival rate sits at a dismal 13%, per the American Cancer Society. Chemotherapy has been the main tool for over three decades.

That may be changing.

An investigational drug called daraxonrasib — previously known as RMC-6236 — just had its Phase 1/2 trial results published in The New England Journal of Medicine in May 2026. The trial involved 16 cancer centers across the United States.

The drug targets mutations in a gene called KRAS, which drives over 90% of all pancreatic cancers. Scientists have been trying to crack KRAS for over thirty years. It was considered "undruggable" — meaning existing medicines couldn't get a grip on it.

Now one can.

Dr. Wungki Park, gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, led the trial. His finding: for most patients, cancer did not worsen for 8.5 months — longer than what standard second-line chemotherapy typically delivers. Some patients reported symptom improvement within days of starting the drug, according to Dr. Park.

"This could be a paradigm shift in how we treat this cancer after more than three decades of relying mainly on chemotherapy," Dr. Park told Memorial Sloan Kettering's own publication.

The FDA has already authorized expanded access — meaning more patients can get the drug while full trials continue. The agency doesn't move on expanded access unless the early signal is strong.

NPR covered the human angle well, profiling Vicky Stinson, a 65-year-old retired National Park Service landscape architect from Flagstaff, Arizona, who was told she had "months — not years" to live after a Stage 3 diagnosis in 2024. Two years later, she's still here, having benefited from daraxonrasib in the trial.

The coverage, however, soft-pedaled the specific survival data and buried the KRAS mutation details that explain why this drug matters at scale.

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The Colon Cancer Trial Results Are Jaw-Dropping

A UK-led study called NEOPRISM-CRC, run by researchers at University College London (UCL) and University College London Hospitals (UCLH), just delivered numbers that warrant significant attention.

The setup: instead of the standard approach — surgery first, then months of chemotherapy — patients with stage 2 or 3 colorectal cancer received just nine weeks of immunotherapy with a drug called pembrolizumab before surgery.

The result: zero relapses after 33 months of follow-up.

After nearly three years, not one patient in the trial has seen their cancer return. That includes patients whose tumors completely disappeared and patients who still had small traces of cancer after treatment.

For context: under standard care, roughly 25% of patients treated with surgery plus chemotherapy see their cancer return within three years, according to the ScienceDaily report citing UCL research.

Dr. Kai-Keen Shiu, Chief Investigator and Consultant Medical Oncologist at UCLH, stated: "Seeing that no patients have experienced a cancer recurrence after almost three years of follow-up is extremely encouraging."

The trial also developed personalized blood tests that detect cancer DNA still circulating in the bloodstream. These tests could tell doctors early whether the treatment worked — before a tumor even shows up on a scan.

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What the Coverage Is Getting Wrong

Fox News mentioned a "new pancreatic cancer pill" reshaping treatment in its recommended article list but didn't dig into the KRAS mutation data or the 33-month colon cancer results at all — it was essentially a headline without substantive reporting.

NPR got the emotional storytelling right but underserved readers on the mechanism and scale of why daraxonrasib is different from every previous pancreatic cancer attempt.

Neither outlet connected the dots between these simultaneous breakthroughs. They treated three stories as separate health segments, when they represent a convergence — targeted genetic therapy, pre-surgical immunotherapy, and personalized blood diagnostics all arriving at roughly the same moment.

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What This Means for Regular People

If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and has already gone through one round of chemotherapy, ask your oncologist about daraxonrasib and whether FDA expanded access applies to your situation. The drug is not fully approved, but access is open.

If you're facing stage 2 or 3 colorectal cancer, the NEOPRISM-CRC results out of UCL are worth bringing to your doctor before agreeing to the standard surgery-first protocol. The pre-surgical immunotherapy approach may warrant discussion.

Cancer research moves slowly — until it doesn't. This week marked a shift: thirty years of "undruggable" has been addressed, nine weeks of immunotherapy is outperforming months of chemotherapy in colon cancer, and personalized blood tests may soon tell doctors whether treatment is working before a tumor recurs.