The FDA's approval of Rasonque has been a breakthrough for patients fighting metastatic pancreatic cancer. WAMC talked to a local researcher about how the drug works and a family who fought to get access to the game-changing medication.
Read the full transcript below:
Sam Dingman: This is WAMC’s Northeast Notebook. I’m Sam Dingman.
Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to treat. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new drug for certain patients affected by the deadly disease.
The developers of the drug say it can reduce the risk of death significantly and increase median overall survival to more than a year.
On today’s show, we’ll learn more about the advancement that is being hailed around the world and the realities of those living with pancreatic cancer.
In December 2025, former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse shared he had pancreatic cancer. He shared his stage 4 diagnosis on social media and became a high-profile public face of the disease.
The cancer can be extremely painful. Symptoms can include weight loss and extreme nausea. It’s often diagnosed late and is frequently fatal.
But a few months later, Sasse announced a surprising turnaround in his symptoms. He appeared on major media outlets to share the news. Here he is speaking on CBS "60 Minutes" in April.
Ben Sasse: I have much, much less pain than I had four months ago when I was diagnosed, and I have a massive 76% reduction in tumor volume over the last four months.
Sam Dingman: Sasse was in a clinical trial for the drug daroxanrasib.
Fast-forward to late August, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug for adults with advanced metastatic pancreatic cancer.
The news caught the eye of WAMC’s Lucas Willard…
Lucas Willard: Pancreatic cancer has something like a 13 percent survival rate. And it’s notoriously tricky to treat with chemotherapy or other traditional forms of cancer treatment.
Sam Dingman: The company that manufactures daroxanrasib, Revolution Medicines, says the drug, sold under the name, Ransonque, can reduce the risk of death by 60 percent. But how does it work?
Lucas Willard: What I’ve learned from talking with researchers and reading some of the press materials, it acts kind of like a glue…
Sam Dingman: OK, so a bit of a cancer explainer before we talk about glue.
Madhavi Kambam: It’s mainly about this particular gene that we’re talking about, which drives the cancer cell growth.
Sam Dingman: Dr. Madhavi Kambam is a medical oncologist at New York Oncology Hematology, a cancer treatment center in Albany, New York. She was among researchers around the world watching the development of daroxanrasib. As Dr. Kambam explains, most forms of pancreatic cancer are caused by a mutation in a gene called K-RAS. Think of the gene as a sort of switch that controls cell division. When that switch is broken, tumors can develop.
And what’s tricky about the K-RAS gene, is that it has a relatively smooth surface.
Madhavi Kambam: This particular gene, the K-RAS gene, it's just it's built in a way that it doesn't have deep, let's say, holes in that gene for us to fit in a drug, like a targeted drug, to attach to it and to be more effective.
Sam to Lucas: Boy, this is very interesting. I didn’t realize there was a geometric component to treating these diseases.
Lucas to Sam: Yeah, it all comes down to geometry, so shout out to everyone that struggled in 10th grade, like I did…
Sam Dingman: So, to recap, the K-RAS gene is smooth and it's hard for traditional drugs to find a place to attach. Daroxanrasib acts like a glue that sticks to another protein, and that blocks the mutated K-RAS gene from telling tumor cells to divide.
Madhavi Kambam: That's one of the main reasons that this is a game changer. That we were able to break that shield, and now the researchers have come up with the way to block this particular mutation, the K-RAS mutation.
Sam Dingman: The drug was approved for wider use on August 26th. Juan Solano, a resident of Washington State, was prescribed it just a few days later.
Juan Solano: I have no words. This is amazing, you know? I see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Lucas to Sam: When I spoke with Juan, he was on Day 7 of taking Rasonque.
Juan Solano: It did catch me by surprise because pretty much puking was my norm, and pain. So, both of them, it's just more medication that I don't have to take.
Sam Dingman: Juan, who was being hospitalized for complications with his pancreatic cancer when he spoke with WAMC, is hopeful about his new treatment. But the road to Rasonque was long and difficult. Remember, the drug is currently only being prescribed to people when traditional cancer treatments have not been effective.
Kelsey Solano: So, first symptom was actually December 24th, 2024.
Sam Dingman: Kelsey Solano is Juan’s wife. She said Juan and his family were celebrating Christmas Eve when he was hit with a wave of pain.
Kelsey Solano: It was just very obvious that something was wrong. Took a quite a few different trips to the emergency department and evaluations and then, on ultimately, I believe, January 15th of 2025 he was diagnosed.
Sam Dingman: So, Juan started a grueling traditional treatment path.
Kelsey Solano: Hindsight's always, you know, 20/20…I wish I would have thought sooner about how to access clinical trials or what that looks like or what would make him eligible so that maybe we could have done something sooner. I don't know that that would have, you know, who knows if that would have made a difference or not.
Sam Dingman: Kelsey found herself researching clinical trials, anything that might help Juan as his cancer progressed.
Kelsey Solano: I don't know why you have to be a stage four patient, to be honest, to access them, but that's kind of the way it's set up. And so, I started making phone calls. I called his clinical nurse navigator, and she said, "Absolutely! Like, well, what trial do you want?”
Sam Dingman: But, it wasn’t just so easy to find a trial. In addition to the questions of eligibility – and availability – there are the logistical matters of time, travel, distance, and cost. They eventually landed on a Phase 1 clinical for a different drug, a K-RAS inhibitor, in May.
Kelsey Solano: It did slow Juan’s cancer progression for a minute, but, ultimately, about a month ago, Juan’s cancer just kind of took off and we had to come off the trial because of progression, and it was at that time that his clinical team at Fred Hutch, Dr. King, said we're really running into a problem clearly, and we need to get Juan treatment fast.
Sam Dingman: And, fortunately, fast it came. By mid-September, Juan, now taking Rasonque, was feeling better.
Kelsey Solano: And so the fact that all of a sudden he's no longer vomiting and his pain is zero and he has started to eat is a huge change in quality.
Juan Solano: So, I'm very grateful for every little change that comes my way.
Sam to Lucas: Do we know if the science behind Rasonque holds any promise for treatment of other difficult-to-treat cancers?
Lucas to Sam: Yes, and I think this approach being able– going back to this gluing idea – does hold out a lot of hold for treatment for other difficult diseases….
Madhavi Kambam: The hope is that it will wide-open the doors for many more treatments like this come up in the future, and also using the same concept in many different scenarios. So, right now the approval is for patients who had chemotherapy already, but there is research going on to see if we can bring this drug early on in the treatment plan.
Sam Dingman: But with even researchers like Dr. Kambam heralding the medical breakthrough for cancer patients, Kelsey Solano wants the public to know the medication can’t be effective if patients don’t have access to it.
Kelsey Solano: Fighting with regulatory insurance companies and you know manufacturers or whatever you're doing or even just making hundreds of phone calls to try to get into a clinical trial or spending all of your time navigating just these complex systems, because you don't know how…takes away from that time where you could be taking a walk and spending quality time when you know that time is something we'll never get back.
Sam Dingman: Northeast Notebook is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. It was produced by our Executive Producer, Lucas Willard. Our editor is Diane DeVore. Music by Eduardo Rivera.
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I'm your host, Sam Dingman. Thanks for listening.
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