Turn on cookies to sign in
Signing in saves your progress to your Curie account. We can only do that with cookies on — turn them on to continue.
A next-gen lung cancer drug just cleared a major hurdle. The phase 3 Krascendo 1 trial found that divarasib significantly extended both progression-free and overall survival compared to current standard-of-care KRAS inhibitors sotorasib and adagrasib in previously treated KRAS G12C–mutated NSCLC. Experts are calling the results potentially practice-changing, with fewer treatment discontinuations to boot.
A next-generation lung cancer drug just cleared a major hurdle. The phase 3 Krascendo 1 trial — presented at the 2026 ESMO Congress and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine — showed that divarasib, a next-generation KRAS G12C inhibitor, significantly outperformed the existing approved agents sotorasib and adagrasib in patients with previously treated, locally advanced or metastatic KRAS G12C–mutated non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Divarasib cut the risk of death by 44% and extended median overall survival by nearly 6 months. It also demonstrated a more favorable tolerability profile — fewer patients discontinued due to side effects, despite staying on treatment more than twice as long. GI side effects like diarrhea were more common with divarasib, but serious liver toxicity was less frequent. Lead investigator Ferdinandos Skoulidis, MD, PhD, called it "a new standard of care" for this patient population.
By the Numbers:
Why it matters: KRAS G12C mutations affect 12–14% of nonsquamous NSCLC patients, and first-generation inhibitors never demonstrated an overall survival benefit over chemotherapy. Divarasib is the first in this class to do so — and with ongoing phase 3 trials exploring first-line combinations with immunotherapy, the treatment landscape for this common lung cancer subtype could be on the verge of a major reset.
