Cancer Center plays key role in lab research, clinical trials for new pancreatic cancer drug
WCPO, WLWT highlight UC's bench to bedside to bench contributions toward daraxonrasib FDA approval
WLWT and WCPO highlighted the contributions of University of Cincinnati Cancer Center researchers that helped lead to the recent Food and Drug Administration approval of daraxonrasib, a new treatment for pancreatic cancer.
Davendra Sohal, MD. Photo/UC Health
“University of Cincinnati Cancer Center has been involved in the whole arc, from preclinical drug discovery all the way to treating patients to figuring out how to make this new class of inhibitors work even better,” the Cancer Center's Andrew Waters, PhD, told WCPO.
The drug is known as a RAS inhibitor, which targets mutations located in the KRAS gene within cancer cells.
“KRAS mutations are found in more than 90% of pancreatic cancers and around 40% of colorectal cancers,” said Davendra Sohal, MD, associate director for clinical research at the Cancer Center and professor of internal medicine in UC’s College of Medicine. “This is a population that doesn’t do well and does not have many options.” Sohal was a site principal investigator for a clinical trial testing the drug at the Cancer Center.
This is the definition of a bench to bedside to bench approach to science, which is required to make even more breakthroughs.
Andrew Waters, PhD
KRAS can be thought of as a “light switch” telling cells when to divide, according to the Waters. His lab collaborated with Revolution Medicines, the makers of daraxonrasib, to conduct preclinical research on what eventually became the new drug compound.
“In the on position, cells divide. In the off position, cells stop dividing. It is tightly controlled, regulated, and balanced in healthy individuals,” said Waters, assistant professor in the UC College of Medicine’s Department of Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology and Department of Cancer Biology. “When you have a mutation in KRAS, the light switch can’t be turned off, and cells divide uncontrollably, driving cancer.”
Waters said other RAS inhibitors approved by the FDA target KRAS when it is in the “off” position, but the new drug targets KRAS in the “on” position. Additionally, the new drug targets all types of RAS mutations, where the currently approved drugs target one specific mutation.
Andrew Waters works in the lab. Photo/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand.
Daraxonrasib is a once-daily pill, providing an alternative to chemotherapy for patients.
“(It’s) making a person with pancreatic cancer live more than twice as long,” Sohal told WLWT. “It’s just unheard of. So, not only the quantity-of-life benefit, living almost twice as long, but the quality-of-life benefit, not having to come in for chemotherapy infusions, dealing with the harsh side effects of chemotherapy.”
Even FDA approval does not mean the end of the work and collaboration between basic science and clinical care and research experts at the Cancer Center, Waters said. His lab uses patient samples taken from the clinic to evaluate resistance mechanisms, with the goal to make these drugs even more durable.
“This is the definition of a bench to bedside to bench approach to science, which is required to make even more breakthroughs,” Waters said.
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Featured photo at top: Graduate assistant Grace Goodhart, right, works in the laboratory as Andrew Waters, PhD, left, looks on. Photo/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand.
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