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.
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.
