At a pivotal moment for pancreatic cancer, Break Through Cancer and the Lustgarten Foundation, with support from the Cinelli Family Foundation, has announced a $16 million investment in the Conquering KRAS for Patients with Pancreatic Cancer TeamLab. Spanning six world-class cancer research institutions, this initiative aims to improve outcomes for one of the deadliest cancers by focusing on KRAS, a gene that is mutated in more than 90% of pancreatic cancer cases.
The initiative comes amid a sea of change in the field. After decades in which oncogenic RAS proteins were considered “undruggable,” a new generation of RAS-directed therapies is showing promise and delivering encouraging results for patients with pancreatic cancer. Yet, while these advances offer invaluable hope for patients and their families, important questions remain about how pancreatic tumors respond to RAS-directed therapy and how future treatment strategies may achieve more durable benefit. Through a first-of-its-kind correlative research study launched in 2024, researchers in the original Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer TeamLab have already assembled an unprecedented collection of patient tumor and blood samples that may help answer those questions.
Building on years of progress, the new initiative will support this multidisciplinary team of scientists and clinicians from six cancer research institutions: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and NYU Langone Health Perlmutter Cancer Center. The team will tackle these challenges through an integrated program of translational science and clinical research.
“Recent advances in RAS-targeted therapies have opened a new chapter in pancreatic cancer research,” said Tyler Jacks, PhD, President of Break Through Cancer. “This initiative is focused on what comes next: understanding how these therapies work in patients, the nature of primary and acquired resistance, and how we can develop treatment strategies that build upon the improvements of RAS-directed therapy alone.”
New Efforts
The new funding will support two complementary efforts.
First, researchers will continue and build on the research emerging from the first-of-its-kind clinical correlative study launched in 2024 through the Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer TeamLab which collected tumor and blood samples before, during, and after treatment with Revolution Medicine’s daraxonrasib—an investigational novel multiselective RAS(ON) inhibitor that recently made headlines following the presentation of phase III trial results in patients with previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer at the 2026 ASCO Annual Meeting. Researchers now have the unprecedented opportunity to analyze these samples and create one of the most comprehensive pictures to date of how pancreatic cancers respond and adapt to RAS-directed therapy. Insights from this work will help identify biomarkers of response, uncover mechanisms of resistance and adaptation, and inform combination therapy strategies.
Second, researchers will establish a clinical study to evaluate next-generation treatment strategies informed by those discoveries. The TeamLab will explore combination therapies designed to enhance the benefit of KRAS-directed treatments, bringing together expertise in cancer biology, immunology, computational science, and patient care.
“Pancreatic cancer research is entering a new era of possibility, and we must invest in the kind of collaborative science that transforms promising advances into meaningful progress for patients,” said Linda Tantawi, Chief Executive Officer of the Lustgarten Foundation. “We are incredibly excited to support the next phase of the Conquering KRAS for Patients with Pancreatic Cancer TeamLab, uniting leading experts across institutions and disciplines to build on the momentum of recent discoveries. By accelerating collaboration and innovation, this initiative will answer critical questions, unlock new opportunities, and drive breakthroughs that shape the future of pancreatic cancer treatment.”
The initiative reflects a shared commitment by Break Through Cancer, the Lustgarten Foundation, and the Cinelli Family Foundation to accelerate progress against pancreatic cancer by investing in collaborative science capable of moving discoveries from the laboratory to patients more quickly.
As RAS-directed therapies continue to advance, researchers believe the greatest opportunity may lie not in any single treatment, but in understanding how to deploy these therapies in combinations with other approaches to achieve lasting benefit.
