Former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse has brought fresh attention to a promising weapon against pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest diseases doctors face. The biotech company Revolution Medicines, traded as RVMD, is racing towards results from a late-stage trial of its drug daraxonrasib.
This daily pill targets RAS mutations that drive nearly all cases of the cancer, offering what could be the first precision therapy for patients facing bleak odds. Survival past five years hovers at just 13 per cent worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, with little improvement despite leaps elsewhere from drugs like immunotherapies.
Sasse, diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer last year and given mere months to live, shared his experience in The New York Times. Since starting daraxonrasib, his tumours have shrunk by 76 per cent. But he warned of the harsh toll, calling it a “nasty drug” with “crazy” side effects including a severe rash that left his face bloody and peeling. The interviewer even remarked that he looked “terrible.”
RBC Capital Markets analyst Leonid Timashev hailed the potential. “This is incredibly important,” he said. “We’ve had physicians describe this as potentially the biggest breakthrough in pancreatic cancer ever.” The drug hits RAS proteins broadly, disrupting tumour growth but also sparking reactions in healthy skin and gut cells. Revolution Medicines reports most rashes as mild, with no trial dropouts.
CEO Mark Goldsmith remembered the early anxiety over dosing. “We fretted over every escalation,” he said. “Every time the team said we’re about to increase the dose, a senior group of us sitting in a conference room would just be holding our head in our hands thinking, ‘Is this going to be it? Are we going to be able to go higher?’”
At 80mg, tumours began shrinking as predicted. “They had done the science to predict that, and that’s exactly what happened,” he added. “We saw the first patient’s tumor shrink, and we said, ‘Wow, our team’s pretty good. They know how to predict this stuff.’”
Regulators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will demand proof of longer lives, not just tumour shrinkage. Data from the phase three study against chemotherapy comes this quarter, with shares up nearly 185 per cent on hopes and buyout talk.
If it delivers, daraxonrasib could echo immunotherapy’s impact on lung cancer and transform prospects for desperate patients.