Stay Informed on Cancer Research Breakthroughs
The latest findings from clinical trials, emerging therapies, and landmark conferences shaping the future of cancer care.
Recent Treatment Breakthroughs
Clinical trials and major oncology conferences are producing compelling findings across several cancer types. Below are three of the most significant developments from the latest research.
Pancreatic Cancer
A new investigational targeted therapy pill, daraxonrasib, nearly doubled median survival times (from 6.7 to 13.2 months) in clinical trials for patients with advanced pancreatic tumors, while offering a much higher quality of life and less fatigue than chemotherapy.
Brain Cancer
An advanced radiopharmaceutical treatment called TLX101 for glioblastoma (an aggressive, typically “undruggable” brain cancer) uses a small molecule to penetrate the blood-brain barrier and deliver targeted radiation straight to tumor cells.
Breast Cancer
Data presented at the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) conference highlighted the success of Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADCs) like sacituzumab govitecan (SG) and datopotamab deruxtecan (Dato-DXd), which are delaying the need for chemotherapy in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.
From the Research Conferences
Emerging Science Themes
Four major themes dominated the latest cancer research conference sessions, spanning immune therapies, vaccines, precision approaches, and artificial intelligence.
Immuno-Oncology
We’ve seen meaningful success with immune checkpoint inhibitors and cellular therapies, but important questions remain. Across sessions, there was a continued focus on why some people with cancer respond to these therapies while others do not, and how to translate those insights into a more consistent benefit. Some of this involves the type of exciting new ideas we need to test more rapidly in human studies. These discussions are far from settled, but they are moving in a productive direction.
Cancer Therapeutic Vaccines
Cancer vaccine research is gaining momentum, and AACR provided a valuable opportunity to highlight how NCI is advancing this field based on early research that suggests vaccines could help prevent recurrence, particularly in cancers where relapse is common. The question now is how to test these vaccines rigorously and at scale. NCI’s partnership with the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health will do that. Later this year, there are plans to unveil a plan to conduct several well-structured trials that will help rapidly and decisively uncover the most promising therapeutic vaccine avenues to pursue.
Functional Precision Medicine
The idea is simple: if you want to know whether a drug will work, test it directly on a person’s tumor cells. In an overflowing session, work presented at AACR showed that new technologies and data increasingly support this approach. The next step is figuring out how to ensure these approaches are reliable and can be widely used in everyday research and care settings. NCI is convening the community through a workshop this summer to define how it can bolster progress in functional precision medicine.
Artificial Intelligence
As expected, AI was a focus of several sessions, highlighting this technology and its range of uses in cancer research. AI is here. The challenge now is not just developing tools but enabling the research community to work together so we can build useful tools faster and ensure they work across systems. The goal is to help foster an environment where AI solutions are shared and interoperable.
Phase 3 Trial: Prostate Cancer Surgery Technique
Long-term data from a phase 3 trial (NCT01812902) presented at the 2026 American Urological Association (AUA) Annual Meeting offers important new findings on lymph node dissection techniques for high-grade prostate cancer.
Extended pelvic lymph node dissection (ePLND) demonstrated a significant improvement in metastasis-free survival (MFS) compared with limited pelvic lymph node dissection (lPLND) in patients with biopsy ISUP grade group (GG) 3–5 prostate cancer undergoing radical prostatectomy.
In the biopsy ISUP GG 3–5 subgroup, the 2026 analysis showed an HR of 0.26 (95% CI, 0.07–0.93; P = .026) favoring ePLND for MFS. This represented a meaningful improvement from the 2021 analysis of the same subgroup, which had an HR of 1.01 (95% CI, 0.12–8.76; P = .996), reflecting the accruing benefit seen with extended follow-up. The updated median follow-up time was 130.6 months (IQR, 107.8–146.5).
The trial enrolled patients with D’Amico intermediate- or high-risk prostate cancer (≥cT2b, PSA ≥10 ng/mL, or Gleason score ≥7) who had no bone metastasis, no prior radiotherapy or hormonal treatment, no other malignant neoplasm, and no prior abdominal or pelvic surgery.
A total of 364 patients were assessed for eligibility; 300 were randomly assigned 1:1 to ePLND (n = 150) or lPLND (n = 150). Enrollment occurred from May 2012 through December 2016, and 11.3% of patients were lost to follow-up in each arm.
The ePLND template included the obturator, external iliac, internal iliac, common iliac, and pre-sacral nodes bilaterally, yielding a median of 17 (IQR, 13–24) lymph nodes removed. The lPLND template was limited to the obturator fossa bilaterally, yielding a median of 3 (IQR, 2–5) nodes. Patients with pathologic lymph node metastases (N+) were significantly more likely to be identified in the ePLND arm (17% vs 3.4%; P < .001).
The primary end point was biochemical recurrence–free survival (BRFS), designed to detect a minimum 15% advantage in 5-year BRFS with ePLND. Secondary end points were MFS and cancer-specific survival.
0.26
Hazard Ratio (HR) for MFS
favoring ePLND (2026 analysis)
300
Patients randomly assigned
150 ePLND • 150 lPLND
130.6
Months median follow-up
(IQR, 107.8–146.5)
New Drug Approvals
Colorectal and Lung: The FDA recently approved combinations of immunotherapies like ipilimumab and nivolumab for advanced colorectal cancer, as well as zenocutuzumab to treat non-small cell lung and pancreatic cancers with specific rare genetic mutations.