[modzu]

"survival" is the wrong word; its terminal. honestly the drugs and chemo and treatments they put pancreatic patients through for possibly a few more (not very nice) weeks is almost criminal. a good doctor will tell you to go make the most of those 3 months post diagnosis. that said its nice to see progress against one of the worst cancers out there and i hope it leads to genuine breakthroughs. but this drug is nothing anybody wants, even if they think they do

[dredmorbius]

The operative term isn't simply "survival" but "survival time", that is, the time, post-diagnosis, a patient cohort may be expected to survive on average. It is a term of art.

It's also meaningful insofar as extended survival time suggests progress against the disease mechanism. This may not mean long-term survival for present sufferers of this particular disease, but may suggest future research which is more promising, or if this route hits a wall on any additional outcomes improvements, limitations to this approach. The advance of knowledge is a benefit, regardless of ultimate patient outcomes.

(Where the trade-off in knowledge gains vs. patient outcomes lies is yet another realm of medical ethics.)

Language-lawyering the term is however specious. If you want to comment on quality of life or other matters, those are separate and meritorious discussions. You're embarking on them in a manner that's not likely to be especially conducive however.

[infamia]

> "survival" is the wrong word; its terminal.

No one actually knows that one way or the other since some patients were still taking it after the study ended according to the article.

[adrian_b]

According to the abstract of the article, there were 2 groups of patients.

One group had median values of 8.5 months for progression-free survival and 13.1 months for overall survival.

The other group had median values of 8.1 months for progression-free survival and 15.6 months for overall survival.

Overall Survival (OS) measures the time until death from any cause.

Progression-Free Survival (PFS) evaluates how long a treatment can delay disease progression or death.

So at least most of the patients from the study have died, because otherwise median values could not have been computed.

Thus the treatment had provided them a median life extension of about 3/4 years. The lucky ones probably have got more than an extra year.

[mft_]

Your numbers are a little off. The NEJM article was published a few hours ago: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2605555

RAS G12 population mOS: daraxonrasib 13.2 months / chemotherapy 6.6 months Overall population mOS: daraxonrasib 13.2 months / chemotherapy 6.7 months

RAS G12 population mPFS: daraxonrasib 7.3 months / chemotherapy 3.5 months Overall population PFS: daraxonrasib 7.2 months / chemotherapy 3.6 months

> Thus the treatment had provided them a median life extension of about 3/4 years. The lucky ones probably have got more than an extra year.

The 'median' patient in this trial lived ~6.6m longer if they received daraxonrasib. It's worth noting that the performance of the chemotherapy arms was stronger in this trial than previous trials of second-line chemotherapy; whether this reflects better care or a prognostically-superior trial population remains to be seen.

[adrian_b]

My numbers were not at all off.

I have quoted exactly the numbers that were written in the abstract of the article yesterday, at the same link that you have used.

What is very weird is that the abstract of the article has been changed, and now it is as you say.

So the numbers from today are worse than those from yesterday.

Perhaps the abstract of yesterday corresponded with a preliminary version of the study report, but meanwhile more patients have died, which has been taken into account in the final version, lowering both the median values for overall survival and for progression-free survival.

[mft_]

No offense intended. I guess someone in the RevMed Scientific Comms team had a more stressful day than they'd envisaged.

> Perhaps the abstract of yesterday corresponded with a preliminary version of the study report, but meanwhile more patients have died, which has been taken into account in the final version, lowering both the median values for overall survival and for progression-free survival.

No. The 'data cut' that these numbers are based on will have been taken (at least) weeks ago. You don't get (anything close to) real-time updates in the manner that you're implying. It was probably just a simple snafu somewhere along the line.