PARIS: After decades of struggling to find a way to treat pancreatic cancer, researchers have developed several promising new drugs that could offer rare hope to patients given this particularly deadly diagnosis.

Pancreatic cancer is notoriously aggressive, with only roughly one in 10 people surviving more than five years after being diagnosed, research has shown.

Rates of this cancer have also been surging worldwide, notably among young adults. It is projected to become the second deadliest cancer, after lung cancer, in developed countries in the coming years.

Despite the scale of this scourge, there has not been “any medical progress for 40 years,” Patrick Mehlen, a researcher at France’s Leon Berard cancer centre, said. But more funding and interest over the last decade has finally been making a “real difference,” he added.

While a cure is still a long way off for most patients, some of these new drugs could add precious months to their lifespan.

The most widely celebrated news came last week, when US pharma firm Revolution Medicines announced positive results for its experimental drug daraxonrasib.

The drug targets a protein called KRAS which is known to play an important role in tumour growth. Half of the patients taking the pill survived more than 13 months — twice as long as a control group receiving chemotherapy.

Published in Dawn, April 23rd, 2026