Robert Mayer tells us about pancreatic cancer’s hopeless past as new data shows promise

When Robert Mayer started his career in pancreatic cancer research in the 1960s, the treatment landscape of pancreatic cancer was dismal. “We had no tools, say like CT scans, to even identify or diagnose these tumors at an early time,” said Mayer. “Colonoscopy was a big deal. Making a diagnosis of a pancreatic cancer often was restricted to the presence of metastatic disease because there was no scan, no blood test that showed that there was something awry in the pancreas. It was in the back of the abdomen and that didn't change for quite some time. “The aura developed that [pancreatic cancer] was something that just you couldn't deal with.” Mayer is now the faculty vice president for Academic Affairs at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and faculty associate dean for Admissions at Harvard Medical School, and is watching this aura is begin to change: Daraxonrasib, a pan-RAS(on) inhibitor, was shown to double overall survival in the recent RASolute-302 trial phase III clinical trial. The results were presented at the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting on May 31. “As with other conditions that we treat, when patients [with pancreatic cancer] come, we'll be able to give them options, plans, steps,” Mayer said. “It may not necessarily be that we can cure, but we can prolong survival, enhance quality of life, reduce time that they have to come to receive toxic systemic parenteral intravenous therapy. All things that really matter so that they can go and be at high school, college graduations, family celebrations, and do all the things that they otherwise would like to do. That has never been something that happened with pancreas cancer.” But the road to developing this drug was laden with bumps, jumps, and potholes. Mayer highlighted some of the most notable mileposts on that long journey in this episode of The Cancer History Project Podcast.