Clues to Why a Breakthrough Pancreatic Cancer Drug Eventually Stops Working
Researchers are asking why patients, like former Senator Ben Sasse, inevitably develop resistance to the drug daraxonrasib.
Last week, the former senator from Nebraska Ben Sasse announced that his Stage 4 pancreatic cancer had developed resistance to a cutting edge treatment. Cancer specialists were not surprised: Nearly every pancreatic cancer patient taking that drug, called daraxonrasib, eventually develops resistance, said Dr. Andrew Aguirre, a pancreatic cancer specialist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
The drug, which was approved in August, electrified patients and doctors by doubling the median survival time of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. And yet like other targeted cancer drugs, it is not a cure: Even for patients in which the treatment is effective, it can suddenly stop working after about seven months.
