Revolution Medicines is charging about $480,000 a year, or $663 a tablet, for Rasonque, its newly approved pancreatic cancer pill. That works out to a wholesale list price of $39,800 for a 30-day supply of the once-daily, two-tablet regimen, according to reporting by The New York Times.
The FDA approved the drug on August 26, 2026, under the brand name Rasonque and the generic name daraxonrasib. It is the first medicine to broadly target mutations of the RAS gene family, the faulty signal that drives growth in most pancreatic tumors.
The sticker price puts Rasonque near the top of a class of newly launched cancer therapies whose annual costs have climbed steadily past $400,000. Twenty years ago, a cancer drug priced at $100,000 a year triggered protest. Nine cancer drugs approved in 2024 arrived above $400,000, and Rasonque sits in the same range as a leukemia pill at $430,000 and a gastrointestinal cancer pill at $520,000, the Times reported.
What the drug actually delivers
In the trial that supported the approval, adults with previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer who took daraxonrasib lived a median of 13.2 months, compared with 6.7 months for those on standard chemotherapy. Progression-free survival, meaning the time before the disease worsened, was 7.2 months versus 3.6 months.
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The randomized phase 3 study, called RASolute 302, enrolled 500 patients and was published in The New England Journal of Medicine in May 2026. The lead author, gastrointestinal oncologist Dr. Eileen O'Reilly at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, told MSKCC that "to date in my career, I have not seen this level of benefit from any single anti-cancer drug in this disease."
Patients also tolerated the pill far better than chemotherapy. Only 1.2 percent of those on daraxonrasib stopped treatment because of side effects, compared with 11.2 percent on chemotherapy. The most common adverse effects are skin rash and gastrointestinal problems.
Who qualifies
The FDA cleared Rasonque for adults with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma who have already had at least one prior systemic therapy, or who cannot tolerate multiagent chemotherapy. It does not require a companion genetic test, so patients can start it regardless of whether a specific RAS mutation has been documented in their tumor.
That matters because pancreatic cancer remains the deadliest major cancer in the United States. The five-year survival rate is stalled at 13 percent, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network reported in January 2026, while survival for all cancers combined has reached 70 percent. Anyone facing a metastatic pancreatic cancer diagnosis should talk with their oncologist about whether daraxonrasib fits their case.
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What insurance will and will not cover
Because Rasonque is an oral pill taken at home, it falls under Medicare Part D rather than Part B. Revolution Medicines has said commercially insured patients may pay as little as $0 through its co-pay assistance program, and uninsured or underinsured patients who meet financial and medical criteria can receive the drug for free.
Medicare beneficiaries are protected by the Inflation Reduction Act's annual out-of-pocket cap on prescription drug spending, which stands at $2,100 in 2026 and rises to $2,400 in 2027. Before that cap existed, a patient could have owed roughly $25,000 a year in cost sharing for a drug at this list price, according to the Times.
Stacie Dusetzina, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University, told the paper that "this drug does have substantial clinical benefits over existing treatment, which isn't always the case for high-priced cancer drugs."
Rasonque is available by prescription now. Patients can access financial-support information through Revolution Medicines' (ON) Path program and through the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network's patient services line.
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This article is made and published by Jesper Bengtson, who may have used AI in the preparation.