When he was first diagnosed with one of the most lethal types of cancers in mid-December, former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, learned he likely had three to four months left to live. A clinical trial changed that.
Sasse, 54, a father of three, received treatment for stage-four pancreatic cancer at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, and started taking daraxonrasib, an experimental drug.
“I bleed a lot on my scalp,” Sasse, who served as the 13th president of the University of Florida, recently told CNN’s Jake Tapper about the drug’s side effects.
After months of treatment with the oral pill by Revolution Medicines, Sasse told the New York Times that he experienced a 76% to 80% decrease in overall tumor volume while experiencing severe skin rashes.
Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the MD Anderson Cancer Center found that patients who received standard treatment survived a median of 6.5 months, while those taking the drug lived for a median of 13 months past the start of treatment.
Dr. Kelsey Klute, of The Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center in Omaha, Nebraska, described daraxonrasib as a game changer.
“Not only are we seeing that this drug can more effectively control the cancer and help people live longer, but it’s also doing that with less serious side effects,” Klute said.
The targeted therapy applies to patients with cancers caused by mutations in the RAS gene family, which drive more than 90% of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cases.
Daraxonrasib is not yet fully approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The application is under priority review, and the drug is available to oncologists for some patients through FDA expanded access.
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