AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Common cancers, like breast, skin, and lung cancers, have become far more survivable in recent years, but not pancreatic cancer. That is changing, though, thanks to very recent breakthroughs. NPR's Yuki Noguchi spoke with one patient hoping that science will outrun her cancer.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: For two years, Vicky Stinson has defied the odds. She's outliving a pancreatic cancer a doctor said would kill her, as it does most victims, within months.
VICKY STINSON: I know it sounds like I should have been absolutely devastated, but I've just - I have this drive (laughter), and I want to keep going.
NOGUCHI: Stinson, a retired landscape architect, has plenty of reason to - a husband she's adored since college, a love of watercolor painting and hiking in Arizona, where she lives.
STINSON: I'm just so grateful for my husband and my friends. I just have so many people pulling for me, and I'm so grateful.
NOGUCHI: Luckily for Stinson, researchers are breaking through with pancreatic cancer, a disease notoriously hard to detect and treat. The New England Journal of Medicine last week published new clinical trial data. It shows a drug, Daraxonrasib, outperforming chemotherapy and enabling patients to live three to four times longer. It's called a RAS inhibitor, and it targets and kills cells with cancerous mutations. Similar treatments have transformed colorectal and lung cancer care. Stinson participated in its trial. She says the big benefit was ease. It's a single pill, not an hourslong infusion, and it carries few side effects. In her case, just some acne on her face and neck.
STINSON: It brought me back to my teens, but I had great energy. I mean, I had a full year of normalcy - did a ton of traveling and went hiking in the Dolomites, just very active.
NOGUCHI: The new drug is so promising the Food and Drug Administration this month allowed its maker, Revolution Medicines, to expand access to patients prior to approval. Oncologist Brian Wolpin directs gastroenterology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and is the study's lead investigator. He hopes that means more patients will get the drug within a couple of weeks or months.
BRIAN WOLPIN: We are not going to be stuck with just using chemotherapy, which is not as specific as we would like, doesn't work as well as we would like, has more side effects than we would like, and instead, shift now to a more targeted approach where we can really go after the gene mutation that is thought to be the main driver of the disease.
NOGUCHI: And Wolpin says it's just the beginning.
WOLPIN: We would like for patients to have very long, durable responses or be cured from their cancer, and I think the RAS inhibitors will form the backbone of that.
NOGUCHI: Now the question is how to marry that with other new developments. Customized mRNA vaccines, for example, are showing promise, and the FDA also recently approved a new therapy that delivers electrical signals to kill tumor cells. Oncologist Saro Sarkisian at Frederick Health in Maryland began using it on pancreatic cancer patients in March. He hopes it will mean less pain and more time for them.
SARO SARKISIAN: The clinical trial showed roughly two to three months of additional survival living longer.
NOGUCHI: Meanwhile, Arizonan Vicky Stinson's cancer returned in March. She's now working with more researchers, hoping for additional breakthroughs.
STINSON: It feels like it's so close, and I kind of feel like (laughter) a ripe tomato on a vine. And it's like, if I can just keep holding on for a little bit longer, this just might work for me.
NOGUCHI: Yuki Noguchi, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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