By 2030, pancreatic cancer will be the second leading cause of cancer-related death. It is a challenging cancer to treat, because it’s typically detected late, spreads aggressively and doesn’t have many treatment options.
As a medical oncologist specializing in gastrointestinal malignancies including pancreatic cancer, I can say that progress in treating this cancer has been painfully slow. Our main tools for decades have been chemotherapy.
The approval of a new drug, daraxonrasib (brand name Rasonque), brings new hope.
What Rasonque does to treat pancreatic cancer
Rasonque is a targeted oral medication that blocks the RAS protein. In more than 90% of patients with pancreatic cancer, RAS is mutated – a growth switch that’s stuck in the “on” position inside tumor cells. Rasonque turns the switch “off.”
In RASOLUTE 302, the clinical trial of patients with pancreatic cancer whose cancer had already worsened on a prior chemotherapy treatment, they lived a median of 13.2 months when they took Rasonque, compared with 6.7 months on standard chemotherapy.
For these patients, their survival rates were doubled and their risk of dying from cancer decreased by 60%. The participants also reported having better control of their pain and a better quality of life for a longer period of time when taking Rasonque.
How Rasonque is provided for pancreatic cancer treatment
Rasonque is taken once a day by mouth. Because it’s in pill form, patients get more time to spend with their loved ones outside of the infusion suites where they’d be receiving chemotherapy.
Its most common side effects are rash, mouth sores, diarrhea and nausea. Far fewer patients discontinued the use of Rasonque because of side effects than they did with chemotherapy.
What it means that Rasonque is now FDA-approved to treat pancreatic cancer
While this drug isn’t a cure for pancreatic cancer, it represents the start of a new era of more, better treatment options.
The current FDA approval is for pancreatic cancer patients in stage 4 of the disease, who have already received at least one prior treatment or who aren’t candidates for combination chemotherapy. For patients and their families, this approval offers something we haven’t been able to offer before: a targeted therapy option that is both more effective and more tolerable. This is real, measurable hope that didn’t exist a year ago.
Accurate, early cancer diagnosis matters
The James Cancer Diagnostic Center gives patients direct, expedited access to diagnostic testing and consultation with Ohio State cancer experts.
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