Federal regulators approved a targeted pill for advanced pancreatic cancer on Wednesday, the first drug of its kind cleared for the most common form of a disease that has resisted almost everything thrown at it for decades. The FDA approved daraxonrasib, sold as Rasonque, for adults with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma who have received at least one prior systemic therapy or who are not candidates for multiagent systemic therapy.
The agency called it a first-in-class therapy. The trial numbers are the reason this matters. In a 500-patient randomized study, people who took the drug lived a median of 13.2 months compared with 6.7 months for those on standard chemotherapy. That is close to a doubling in a cancer where meaningful gains have been measured in weeks.
