HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new drug offering hope for people with pancreatic cancer, which is one of the deadliest types of cancer.
The drug is called daraxonrasib and it will be sold under the brand name Rasonque. According to the FDA, the pill – taken daily – targets forms of a protein called RAS, which is a main driver of tumor growth.
The FDA cited a clinical trial involving 500 patients with previously treated metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma. The results show Rasonque improved median overall survival to just over 13 months compared to 6.7 months in patients who received standard chemotherapy.
Tampa Bay 28 Anchor Lauren St Germain covers medical news and she had a discussion with Dr. Sharona Ross, a Foregut & HPB Robotics Surgeon at AdventHealth Tampa, about the drug and how it works.
“The drug is able to block the mutated protein which is KRAS. What the KRAS does is – it fuels tumor growth but in such a way that it … replicates and replicates and grows … so being able to stop that mutated protein which is involved with like 90% … 80-90% of the pancreatic cancer, you are able to stop it from progressing,” said Dr. Ross.
“The way it does it … It glues molecules together and then they grab that KRAS – that mutated protein … and kill it – I mean it’s the first time that we actually have had targeted therapy – I have been working with patients with pancreatic cancer for 20 years and it’s never been like that,” said Dr. Ross.
Dr. Ross also discussed how this drug could affect pancreatic cancer patients in the future.
“This drug gives hope for so many people to maybe move from locally advanced or metastatic disease to more surgical disease where we can take it out because the only chance for cure for pancreatic cancer is with resection – with taking it out completely,” said Dr. Sharona Ross.
According to the FDA, the most common side effects of the drug are rash, diarrhea, stomatitis (inflammation of the mouth’s mucous membranes), nausea, fatigue, vomiting, abdominal pain, edema, decreased appetite, and hemorrhage.
Pancreatic Cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, 67,530 people will be diagnosed this year and about 52,740 people will die this year of pancreatic cancer.
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