Health officials have approved a groundbreaking pancreas cancer drug that doubles the chances of survival.
The FDA announced Wednesday that it has approved daraxonrasib, a first-of-its-kind pill that targets the KRAS genetic mutation, which causes nearly 90 percent of pancreatic cancer cases.
The drug is taken as two pills a day and is approved for pancreatic cancer patients with metastatic disease, meaning it has spread to other organs, who have already tried chemotherapy.
In a major clinical trial unveiled earlier this year, participants taking daraxonrasib lived an average of 13.2 months, almost double the time of those receiving chemotherapy. Several patients even lived for years after starting treatment.
While the drug is not a cure for pancreatic cancer, it does offer a glimmer of hope for one of America’s deadliest cancers, which kills nearly all patients within five years.
“We have never seen such a benefit,” said Dr. Anna Berkenblit, the chief scientific and medical officer of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.
Drugmaker Revolution Medicines said its approved daraxonrasib will be sold under the brand name Rasonque. The company has not yet announced how much the drug will cost.
However, since May, more than 2,000 patients have received free, early access to daraxonrasib through the FDA’s expanded access program, including former Nebraska Senator Ben Sassewho was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer in December.
The FDA has approved a daily pill that doubles survival rates for pancreatic cancer patients
Revolution Medicines said people who get the drug through expanded access will switch to coverage through their insurance.
Pancreatic cancer affects 67,000 Americans each year and kills 52,000, according to data from the American Cancer Society.
For decades it was considered a disease of the elderly, mainly affecting people over 65, especially those with long-term risk factors such as smoking, obesity or type 2 diabetes.
But over the past two decades, doctors have warned that more and more patients in their 20s, 30s and 40s are being diagnosed, often without classic risk factors.
Population-level data appear to support these observations. According to the American Cancer Society, the lifetime risk of developing pancreatic cancer is one in 56 for men and one in 60 for women.
Although the disease remains rare in younger adults, the incidence is steadily increasing.
According to a 2025 analysis, from 2000 to 2021, pancreatic cancer diagnoses increased 4.3 percent per year among Americans ages 15 to 34, and 1.5 percent per year among people ages 35 to 54.
In the early stages, symptoms are vague and easy to ignore: a dull backache, periodic digestive problems, unexplained fatigue, subtle yellowing of the eyes or skin that comes and goes.
Ryan Dwars from Iowa with his family. At the age of 36, he was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer
Doctors often describe it as a cancer that ‘whispers’ instead of shouts – and by the time the cancer finally makes itself heard, it is often a death sentence. It is precisely the stealth that makes pancreatic cancer so dangerous.
About 80 percent of cases are diagnosed only after the disease has spread beyond the pancreas, at which point surgery — currently the only possible cure — is no longer an option.
Overall, only 12 percent of patients survive five years after diagnosis, and the majority do not live longer than a year.
In May, researchers shared the results of a clinical trial involving 500 patients, with an average age of 66, from North America, Europe and Asia with metastatic pancreatic cancer who had previously received other treatments.
The above graph shows the pancreatic cancer survival rate by stage
Just under half received daaxonrasib, while the remaining patients received standard chemotherapy.
Median survival was 13.2 months in the daraxonrasib group, compared with 6.7 months for those who received chemotherapy. Daraxonrasib also caused fewer side effects than chemotherapy, with patients mainly reporting rash, diarrhea, fatigue and nausea.
About 90 percent of pancreatic cancers are caused by a mutated cellular protein called KRAS. Daraxonrasib is thought to ‘glue’ molecules together to disable KRAS, slowing the spread of cancer cells.
Dr. Brian Wolpin, chief clinical officer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said when the findings were unveiled at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology: ‘It’s exciting that we will soon be able to help patients with metastases. [advanced] pancreatic cancer in ways we couldn’t before, improving both survival and quality of life.
‘I have never seen anything like this before in studies of pancreatic cancer. I kept repeating, “Wow.”
