03.06.2026 Oncology

Daraxonrasib: the story of a drug that took 44 years to develop

A New York Times report chronicles four decades of research culminating in the development of daraxonrasib, a drug that doubled the overall survival of patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer

Diogo Rodriguez

WHAT DO I RECOMMEND?

I recommend the article “How an ‘Impossible’ Idea Led to a Pancreatic Cancer Breakthrough,“ published by The New York Times on May 12, 2026, and written by Gina Kolata and Rebecca Robbins. The article draws on interviews with 27 scientists, physicians, and clinical trial participants.

It recounts the story of a discovery that took more than four decades to finally reach patients—and which for a long time was deemed impossible.

WHY IS THIS ARTICLE IMPORTANT?

The Times article is a deeply researched piece of science journalism: 27 sources, a 44-year timeline, and individuals who paid a price for challenging the prevailing consensus. Kevan Shokat, of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), spent five years sifting through 500 molecules in search of a protein pocket that the entire academic field had written off. Greg Verdine of Harvard looked to nature for a solution that conventional chemistry could not imagine. Both were ignored or ridiculed by “eminent” researchers—but they persisted.

“Each breakthrough led to one more dogma being rejected and the discovery that what everyone assumed to be true was in fact not true,” said Adrienne Cox of the University of North Carolina.

The report also documents the true cost of a mistaken consensus. The idea that the KRAS protein was inaccessible to drugs was not a fringe position: it was the dominant one. Companies left the field. Researchers were denied funding. The report is a case study in the limits of scientific authority and what is lost when it goes unquestioned.

WHAT MAKES THIS ARTICLE A MUST-READ?

There are two passages in the text worth reading on their own.

The first is the profile of Rhea Caras, a retired lawyer diagnosed in 2023 with metastatic pancreatic cancer and told she had months to live. Two years later, she still takes her pills daily and is planning a trip to Hawaii with her family. “I’m almost certain I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for this drug,” she says. “I’m living a pretty good life, and I never expected that.”

The second is Robert Weinberg. In 1982, the MIT scientist made one of the seminal discoveries regarding the role of RAS genes in cancer. In an interview this month, at age 83, he remarked that it took 44 years for patients to benefit from his work and that he lived to see it happen. “It would have been nice if the Lord had sent us something easier to tackle,” he said. “But that’s not what happened.”

* This article may be republished online under the CC-BY-NC-ND Creative Commons license.
The text must not be edited and the author(s) and source (Science Arena) must be credited.