A new daily pill helps people with lung cancer live longer

If you or someone you love is living with lung cancer, here is news worth reading. A new daily pill called divarasib helped people live longer than the older pills used for the same kind of tumor. It also caused fewer serious side effects.

The pill is for a specific type of lung cancer, one that carries a gene change called KRAS G12C. In a large international trial, people who took divarasib lived about five and a half months longer, on median, than people who took the older pills. That is a real step forward for a group of patients who have had few options.

What is KRAS G12C?

Think of KRAS as a switch inside a cell that tells it to grow. In some lung cancers of the most common type, the switch gets stuck in the “on” position. That stuck switch is the KRAS G12C change.

For decades, scientists thought KRAS could not be targeted at all. Then pills called sotorasib and adagrasib arrived and proved it could. Divarasib is a newer pill in the same family. In lab tests, it was more potent and more selective than those two.

How the study worked

The trial enrolled 338 people with advanced lung cancer that had already been treated and that carried the KRAS G12C change. By chance, 167 people got divarasib and 171 got an older pill, either sotorasib or adagrasib. Most of the older-pill group, 156 people, got sotorasib. People took their pill every day until the cancer grew, side effects became too hard, or they stopped for another reason, and independent reviewers who did not know who got what judged the cancer’s progress. It was a phase 3 trial published on Oct. 25, 2026, in the New England Journal of Medicine, and the people and their doctors knew which pill they were taking, and the drug maker, Roche, paid for it.

What they found

People on divarasib lived longer. Their median survival was 17.7 months, compared with 12.0 months for people on the older pills. The cancer also stayed under control longer: 9.8 months on divarasib versus 5.7 months on the older pills before it grew.

More tumors shrank, too. Among the 328 people who could be checked for a response, tumors shrank and stayed smaller in 58.4% of those on divarasib. In the older-pill group, that was 32.3%. When tumors did shrink, the effect lasted a median of 11.9 months with divarasib and 6.9 months with the older pills.

The news on side effects is just as good. Serious side effects linked to treatment (the kind doctors call grade 3 or 4) happened in 24.6% of people on divarasib and in 34.5% of people on the older pills.

In plain terms, the newer pill did more of what you want a cancer drug to do, and it was easier on the people taking it. That combination is what makes this result stand out. Many people stay on these pills for months, so a pill that works longer and is gentler matters in daily life.

What you can do today

The right pill depends on the tumor’s genetic makeup, so the first step is knowing it. If you or someone close to you has advanced lung cancer, write down this question for the next oncology visit: “Was the tumor tested for KRAS G12C and other genetic changes?” If the answer is yes and the change is there, ask what the options are, including this pill and clinical trials. The trial behind this news is listed on ClinicalTrials.gov as NCT06497556, so you can bring that number along.