Enthusiasm around daraxonrasib is reaching a fever pitch. In the Phase 3 trial of 500 patients, the drug was shown to double the survival time of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, a notoriously deadly cancer: 13.2 months, on average, compared to 6.7 months for people who got chemo. On Sunday, Wainberg and his colleagues presented those results at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in Chicago. The full study was simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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Now, the excitement is spilling over to other types of cancer. Daxaronrasib, which is taken as three pills once a day, works by targeting a mutation in the KRAS gene found across many cancers, including lung, colorectal, ovarian, endometrial and a type of bile duct cancer called cholangiocarcinoma.

“Pancreas cancer may be the first for this drug, but there will be others,” said Dr. Brian Wolpin, who also led research on daraxonrasib and directs the Hale Family Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. “Now the floodgates open.”

The Food and Drug Administration has already put the drug on a fast track toward approval for pancreatic cancer, and earlier this month said it would permit Revolution Medicines to give it to patients outside of clinical trials in an expanded access program.

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Studies for similar drugs in the pipeline are underway. Daraxonrasib is not a cure for cancer; tumors eventually figure out a way to grow again. Ideally, oncologists want an arsenal of drugs like it in line to give to patients when they develop resistance.

Revolution Medicines’ Goldsmith said the company has three other such drugs, called RAS inhibitors, in clinical trials, with a fourth due to start later this year.

Daraxonrasib’s effectiveness appears to expand beyond targeting the mutation. Overall survival was 13.2 months for all patients who got the drug, regardless of whether they had the KRAS mutation.

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By all accounts, daraxonrasib is much less toxic compared to chemo. Some patients reported vomiting and diarrhea, as well as sores in the mouth and throat. Some developed a blistering rash that looked like a bad sunburn. Former Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who got the drug in a clinical trial, described the rash as “nuclear” on a New York Times podcast in April.