Pancreatic cancer drug Rasonque wins FDA approval

The US Food and Drug Administration approved Rasonque, a pancreatic cancer treatment developed by US startup Revolution Medicines, the agency announced on Wednesday.

The treatment is taken as a pill and uses a molecule called daraxonrasib. A clinical trial found that half of patients who received the drug survived for more than 13 months, about twice as long as the group treated with standard chemotherapy.

FDA acting commissioner Kyle Diamantas said the approval provides “a critical new option” for patients facing a hard-to-treat cancer.

The treatment is not a cure, but it could offer additional months of life for some patients with pancreatic cancer, which is described as one of the deadliest forms of the disease. The molecule targets a protein involved in several cancers that had been difficult to target until recently.