US regulators on Wednesday approved a drug that slows pancreatic cancer, a breakthrough treatment for a disease that kills seven out of eight patients within five years.
In a late-stage study, RevMed’s Rasonque helped subjects live to 13 months, nearly twice as long as those who only received chemotherapy. “This is life-altering,” an oncologist told The Wall Street Journal.
Researchers spent decades trying to target a group of mutations called RAS — responsible for nearly a third of all human cancers — but the protein’s flat shape defied typical drugs. RevMed designed a new “molecular glue” that latched onto a pocket on the protein. Rasonque could generate more than $20 billion in annual sales, a pharma analytics firm forecast.
