This drug won a standing ovation but will Aussies ever see it?

The US FDA’s approval of pancreatic cancer drug Rasonque (daraxonrasib) was a cause for celebration stateside last week. But in Australia, it’s a different story.

“We’re getting lots of calls from people who are trying to get access to the drug,” Michelle Stewart, CEO of the pancreatic cancer charity Pankind, told Pharma in Focus. “They can see from the global media that there is a new treatment that may work in metastatic pancreatic cancer, but they can’t get access to it. So it is causing quite a significant amount of stress for a number of families.”

Pankind is recommending that families look for clinical trials of Rasonque and other RAS inhibitors as a way of accessing this class of drug. A phase 3 trial, RASolute 303, studying Rasonque as a first-line treatment, both alone and in combination with chemotherapy, is currently recruiting in Australia.