Every year, the world’s cancer researchers gather in Chicago for the biggest date in their calendar: the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting.
ASCO is where cancer scientists share their latest findings and discoveries, giving us all a glimpse of how preventing, diagnosing and treating cancer might change in the years to come.
Throughout the 2026 conference, Cancer Research UK’s experts were on hand to review some of the biggest and most interesting studies and announcements. We’ve gathered it all together in this article.
Daily pancreatic cancer pill shows “unprecedented” improvement in survival
A new targeted treatment can double the average survival time for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, according to an international phase 3 trial.
It’s such a breakthrough, it drew a standing ovation from the ASCO crowd.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the hardest cancers to stop. It grows quickly, resists traditional treatments and rarely causes clear symptoms until it reaches its later stages.
Scientists have spent a long time studying the biology of pancreatic cancer to find better ways to treat it. One big focus has been a group of genes in our cells called RAS genes, primarily one called KRAS. Mutations to these genes drive more than 9 out of 10 pancreatic cancers, but they’re very difficult to target.
“KRAS used to be considered undruggable, like nothing could touch it,” explained Dr Sam Godfrey, our science engagement lead. “It was a bit like a light that’s stuck on, with no actual switch to turn it off.”
Now, though, researchers have found a way to access the wiring.
In a 500-person trial, daraxonrasib, a daily pill designed to block the growth-powering proteins made by RAS genes, increased the average survival time for people with advanced, previously treated pancreatic cancer from 6.7 months to 13.2 months. The drug also caused fewer side effects than chemotherapy.
“Research has pretty much doubled survival rates across all cancers bar a few, but pancreatic cancer is one of those really stubborn cancers which has lagged behind,” said Godfrey, who called the results “unprecedented”.
“Anything which gives people more time when they have such an intractable, difficult-to-treat cancer is really, really exciting.”
Next, medicine regulators will need to evaluate the data to ensure daraxonrasib is suitable for use as a standard treatment.
“It’s quite hard to say how long that’s going to take, but with such strong results as this, I would hope the process will move fairly swiftly,” said Godfrey.
Triple-action ‘cancer jab’ clears out advanced head and neck cancers
Other new treatments are finding success by targeting cancer cells from multiple angles at once.
Amivantamab is one example. On the one side, it can block off two important switches cancers trigger to grow, spread and survive, and, on the other, it can help reveal cancer cells to the immune system.
The NHS already offers amivantamab, which is given as an injection, as a treatment for some lung cancers. Now, an international trial led by the Institute of Cancer Research in London has shown its potential for treating advanced head and neck cancer, too.
The OrigAMI-4 study gave amivantamab to 102 people with head and neck cancer that had spread or come back and wasn’t responding to other treatments. It shrank or eradicated 43 of those patients’ tumours.
“Treatment for head and neck cancer can have a profound impact on patients’ daily lives,” said Dr Sarah Halford, the head of medical sciences at Cancer Research UK’s Centre for Drug Development. “These results suggest this targeted treatment has the potential to offer a new option for some people whose cancer has stopped responding to standard care.
“Seeing tumours shrink in over 40% of patients – with no detectable signs of cancer in 15% – is encouraging. And importantly, this drug is given as a simple injection, making it quicker, more convenient, and potentially easier to tolerate.”
The story of amivantamab goes back to the very beginning of targeted treatment. One of the growth switches it blocks, EGFR, was discovered by Cancer Research UK researchers in the 1980s, opening the way to the current era of precision cancer therapy.
A promising new treatment for advanced bowel cancer
With our support, a separate early stage trial at the ICR has shown that adding another new targeted drug to chemotherapy could help shrink and control advanced bowel (colorectal) cancers.
The INBRX-109 clinical trial is testing ozekibart, which is designed to kill cancer cells by activating a protein on their surface called death receptor 5, in combination with FOLFIRI chemotherapy, a standard treatment for advanced bowel cancer.
Dr Hazel Lote, a researcher backed by the Bowelbabe Fund for Cancer Research UK, is one of the lead investigators on the trial.
“These early results are promising for patients with advanced colorectal cancer who have very few treatment options left,” said Lote, who works at the Royal Marsden NHS Trust and the ICR.
“The combination of ozekibart plus FOLFIRI not only shrank tumours in some patients, but stopped the cancer from worsening in many others, suggesting this treatment combination could offer a promising new treatment option. While this is still an early-stage trial, the findings are really encouraging for this patient group where there are very few treatment options and supports further research into this treatment.”
Unlocking the power of immunotherapy for more cancers
Yet another new type of drug, this one designed to make it harder for hard-to-treat cancers to hide from the immune system, also made headlines around ASCO. It helped make immunotherapy more effective for people with six different types of cancer.
This was in a phase 1 trial designed to test the safety of the drug, which is so new it’s known only as GRWD5769. Researchers combined it with immunotherapy for 83 patients with advanced cancers that had resisted other treatments, and almost 1 in 3 of these patients’ tumours shrank.
“Immunotherapy has transformed treatment for some cancers, but it doesn’t yet work for everyone,” said Godfrey.
“It’s unusual to see such outcomes in patients whose cancers have already stopped responding to treatment, particularly across several hard‑to‑treat cancer types, so these results are encouraging.
“However, this is still an early‑stage study, and larger trials will be needed to determine whether this approach can deliver lasting benefits for patients.”
Boosting the immune system stops bladder cancer without surgery
The established immunotherapy drug durvalumab is showing signs it can help stop bladder cancers without the need for surgery, according to another ICR-led study at ASCO.
In the phase 2 RAD-IO trial, doctors used durvalumab alongside chemotherapy and radiotherapy to treat bladder cancer that has grown into the muscle wall around the bladder.
In too many cases, this advanced form of bladder cancer (often called muscle-invasive bladder cancer) can come back after treatment. Surgery is one way to lower that risk, but the operation can be life-altering. It involves removing the bladder and giving people a new way to pass urine.
According to the early results RAD-IO’s researchers shared at ASCO, immunotherapy could help more people stay cancer-free without having to face those side effects.
A year after treatment, more than 8 in 10 people who received durvalumab on the trial had no signs of bladder cancer. That’s a big boost from previous studies, which found that 6 out of 10 patients treated with chemoradiation alone were cancer-free one year on.
“Radical surgery can cause serious side effects for bladder cancer patients,” says Michelle Mitchell, our chief executive. “Finding kinder ways to treat the disease is incredibly important, and this trial has done exactly that.
Durvalumab is already approved to approved to treat NHS patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer in combination with surgery, and now there’s hope it can play an even more prominent role in future.
“Further research will be needed at a larger scale to know for sure, but these results have the potential to be life-changing for some bladder cancer patients,” said Mitchell. “Breakthroughs just like this are essential to ensure people affected by cancer can live not just longer lives, but better lives.”