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Experimental Treatments May Extend Survival in Pancreatic Cancer

Research on two separate investigational drugs appear to extend survival in people with metastatic pancreatic cancer, according to an article in Time. In an ongoing phase III clinical trial, patients who took the oral targeted therapy daraxonrasib lived a median of 13.2 months compared with 6.7 months for those who received chemotherapy. The drug’s manufacturer, Revolution Medicines, announced the early data, which have not been published. In a separate study, results from a phase II clinical trial, published April 14, 2026, in Nature Medicine, found people who received a once-weekly infusion of elraglusib with chemotherapy had a median increase in survival of three months compared with people receiving chemotherapy alone. The study included 233 people with previously untreated metastatic pancreatic cancer. “Those [results] are rarely seen in pancreatic cancer,” said Devalingam Mahalingam, a physician-scientist at Northwestern Medicine’s Robert H. Lurie Cancer Center in Chicago and lead author of the elraglusib study. Daraxonrasib targets KRAS mutations—which are found in more than 90% of pancreatic tumors—while elraglusib blocks a protein involved with multiple cellular processes to help tumors become more responsive to chemotherapy and immunotherapy, the Time article noted.

For Advanced Breast Cancer, CDK4/6 Inhibitors After First-line Treatment May Reduce Side Effects

In 2016, data from the PALOMA-2 trial showed the addition of the CDK4/6 inhibitor Ibrance (palbociclib) to first line treatment for advanced breast cancer could control cancer for longer periods of time than hormone therapy alone. These results moved the drug from second-line treatment to first-line treatment for people with advanced breast cancer. However, a study published April 1, 2026, in JAMA Oncology, showed women with advanced breast cancer live about the same length of time regardless of whether they receive the drug as part of first-line or second-line treatment. Women who received a first-line CDK4/6 inhibitor experienced more serious side effects than women who took the CDK4/6 inhibitor later. Gabe S. Sonke, a medical oncologist and clinical researcher at Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, told Healio he noted similar risk of cancer progression in studies that assessed CDK4/6 inhibitors in the second and first line. “I thought, that’s interesting. First line is effective. Second line is effective. Why would we bother giving patients an additional treatment if you can just as well postpone this?” In the new study, Sonke and other researchers divided 1,050 adult women with hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer into two groups. Women received either first-line aromatase inhibitor plus a CDK4/6 inhibitor followed by second-line fulvestrant or a first-line aromatase inhibitor followed by second-line CDK4/6 inhibitor plus fulvestrant. Both groups lived nearly the same amount of time: 47.9 months for people receiving a first-line CDK4/6 inhibitor and 48.1 months for people receiving it as a second-line treatment. However, premenopausal women lived longer when receiving CDK4/6 inhibitors in the first line versus the second line.

HPV Vaccine Benefits Extend Beyond Cervical Cancer

HPV vaccines are known for preventing cervical cancer in women. A study published in JAMA Oncology has underscored the vaccine’s ability to lower risk for several HPV-related cancer in males. The study examined data from 1 million boys and young men. Half received the HPV vaccine between ages 9 and 26 from 2016 to 2024 while the rest did not receive HPV vaccination. Those who were vaccinated were almost 50% less likely to develop cancers of the head and neck, esophagus, anus, or penis, according to a story published by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP). The results show the importance of vaccinating all children and teens against HPV, according to Taito Kitano, the study author, who is a physician and researcher at Nara Prefecture General Medical Center in Nara, Japan. “Children, adolescents, parents and health care workers should be more informed about the expected benefits of HPV vaccine, not just cervical cancer,” Kitano said in the article. Oliver Brooks, a pediatrician and spokesman for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, told CIDRAP he was impressed by the large number of people included in the analysis. “The new study provides the strongest evidence yet that HPV vaccines protect men as well as women,” Brooks said. “This is a vaccine that is preventing cancer in a major way.”