When Russ Reed rang the bell marking the end of his cancer treatment in February 2025, he was declared free of disease after radiation, chemotherapy and surgery. Months later, the cancer returned.
Reed, 64, didn’t qualify for trials of daraxonrasib, a recently drug that goes after the key mutation behind most pancreatic cancers — and one that could roughly double survival time.
So his wife, Marnie, turned to TikTok. “I’m Marnie Reed, and I’m trying to save my husband’s life,” she said in videos that drew thousands of views.
Pancreatic cancer has long been one of medicine’s toughest fights — itap notoriously hard to catch early and often spreads before doctors find it. Daraxonrasib — sold under the brand name Rasonque — a new drug approved by the FDA this week, nearly doubled median survival to 13.2 months from 6.7 months with chemotherapy alone, while causing fewer side effects. The once-daily pill costs roughly $39,800 for a one-month supply, and patients are pushing to get it.
“I just kept calling them out every day,” Marnie Reed said. “Why are we able to get it and you’re not giving it to us?”
On day 63 of his wife’s campaign, Russ Reed, a Port St. Lucie resident who travels to Broward for treatment, was approved to receive the treatment through an FDA Expanded Access Program that opened in early July, after standard treatments had stopped working for him.
“When my chemotherapy, the efficacy stopped working, Rasonque was the last resort,” said Reed, a patient at Memorial Cancer Institute — the first cancer program in Broward County to obtain the drug — since his diagnosis in August 2024.
Twelve days after starting the pill, Russ was pain-free, and a scan four weeks later showed the tumors in his liver had shrunk significantly.
Side effects included acne, skin rash, mouth sores and digestive issues.
“The rash is real, and itap no joke, but my team is helping me get through it,” Russ said.
Julian Itzkowitz, 80, had a similar experience. After a Whipple surgery — removal of the head of the pancreas, part of the small intestine, the gallbladder, and the bile duct — doctors initially told him the cancer was gone. A scan about a year later found it had spread to his lungs.
Itzkowitz, also a Port St. Lucie resident, was first diagnosed in 2022 after back pain led to an MRI that revealed a pancreatic tumor.
“I tried everything else. I had chemo, I had radiation, I had another drug — but it didn’t do anything,” he said. “All along I was taking chemo, but chemo was killing me. I hope I can stay on this drug for a long time.”
He started Rasonque four months ago.
The drug is currently approved only for stage 4 pancreatic cancer patients who have already tried chemotherapy, either because it stopped working or they couldn’t tolerate it — or, in some cases, as a first-line treatment for patients who can’t tolerate chemo at all. Patients with localized (early stages) cancer aren’t yet eligible.
But a trial is underway testing whether the drug can prevent relapse in patients like Reed and Itzkowitz, though results aren’t in yet, according to Peter Hosein, the associate director for clinical research at the Pancreatic Cancer Research Institute at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Health System.
He expects most insurance companies to cover the drug and anticipates it to get on the market soon. Any doctor will be able to prescribe it now that it has FDA approval.
The American Cancer Society estimates about new pancreatic cancer cases will be diagnosed in the U.S. this year, with over 52,000 deaths. The five-year survival rate is 13%.
“We see over 30,000 cases a year of newly diagnosed pancreatic cancer, with more than half of those patients dying within the year of diagnosis,” said Mike Cusnir, chief of hematology and oncology and co-director of Gastrointestinal Malignancies at Mount Sinai Medical Center’s Braman Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Some patients even die just waiting to get the medication delivered. Thatap how deadly this disease is.”
Families like the Reeds say getting into clinical trials is often harder than the disease itself.
“The way we do trials in this country is very concerning — there are very limited spots, very stringent criteria,” Marnie Reed said. One trial Russ Reed qualified for, in Arizona, required living within 9 miles of the hospital; another, at Sylvester, had no openings.
Trials for the drug began two years ago, and Mount Sinai started using it three months ago.
“The results have been unbelievable,” Cusnir said. “We have never seen something like this.”
But experts caution it isn’t a cure.
“It can help prolong survival and definitely give hope, but it doesn’t seem like it will eradicate cancer at this point,” said Hosein at the Sylvester cancer center.
For now, that hope is enough for some patients.
“September 22 will be four years for me. Originally they told me six months to a year,” Itzkowitz said. “But I’m still here.”
