alt Hacker News1. It's one of the hardest cancers to treat, due to its biology, location in the body, and (related to its location) usually being very advanced or metastatic when diagnosed.
2. Mice =/= humans, as noted.
However we're heading into a new era of treatments for some cancers including pancreatic. New agents targeting RAS/KRAS pathways will likely deliver the first meaningful treatment advances in decades.
Daraxonrasib (which was used in the linked study) is leading the charge, but there are multiple other drugs (including agents that are a little more targeted, and therefore likely slightly better tolerated, like pan-KRAS or KRAS G12D inhibitors) in development too.
Here are the three simultanious things targeted in this experment.
Triple inhibition strategy Pancreatic cancer remains notoriously difficult to treat, with very poor survival rates and limited effective therapies. The new research aims to combat this by targeting RAF1, EGFR family receptors and STAT3 signalling – nodes that are crucial for tumour growth and survival.