In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, we look at Revolution Medicine’s pancreatic cancer pill, the top self-made healthcare entrepreneurs, the latest 30 Under 30 Science & Healthcare list, and more. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.

Pancreatic cancer has long been one of the worst diagnoses a person could get. A new drug from Revolution Medicines may offer some hope. In clinical trial results announced Monday, patients with metastatic cancer who took the company’s targeted pill lived nearly twice as long as patients who received chemotherapy, or a median of 13.2 months versus 6.7 months.

RevMed’s pill, daraxonrasib, works by blocking a group of genes called RAS that drive tumor growth. The company said that it would use the new data to apply for FDA approval under an expedited review program.

“We all were and are gobsmacked by this result,” Revolution Medicines CEO Mark Goldsmith told Forbes. “It is elevating the survival bar in one of the deadliest human cancers.”

Pancreatic cancer tends to be diagnosed late when the cancer is already advanced and difficult to treat. Five-year survival rates for pancreatic adenocarcinoma (the most common type) are just 8%. (Even when it’s caught early, the five-year survival rate is only 44%). The American Cancer Society forecasts that some 67,530 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year and 52,740 will die of the disease.

Ben Sasse, the former Nebraska senator who announced in December that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, said in a video with the New York Times last week that he was on Revolution Medicine’s drug as part of a trial. Appearing with bloody splotches on his face (a harsh side effect of daraxonrasib), he said that the medication had shrunk his tumors by 76% since December and that he had been able to cut back his pain medications.

Third Rock Ventures launched Revolution Medicines in 2015, which licensed research from Martin Burke, a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Its pipeline includes other drugs that target RAS-addicted cancers, especially pancreatic, lung and colon cancers. The firm plans to give multiple updates on the oncology drugs in its pipeline at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in San Diego, beginning on Friday.

The company was the object of takeover talks earlier this year, with The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times reporting that Merck was trying to buy the company for between $28 billion and $32 billion before discussions broke down. On Monday, after announcing the results of the study, Revolution Medicine’s stock soared, closing up 41% at $136, giving the company a market cap of $27 billion. “It is one way to measure what the world thinks,” Goldsmith says, “and I think they’ve spoken with near-unanimity about it.”

The Self-Made Healthcare Giants

As part of our ongoing celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, last week Forbes unveiled the Self-Made 250, which celebrates those Americans who have come from humble beginnings and overcome significant obstacles to achieve financial success and enduring impact. A few of those who’ve found success in healthcare, whether on the business or scientific side, include:

Mark Cuban: The Shark Tank shark who founded pharmacy Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs sold stamps door-to-door as a kid and gave disco lessons to help pay his way through Indiana University. Later on, he shared a cramped apartment with five roommates where he slept on the floor. Recalls Cuban, “None of us had any money, but we had some wild times.” (See Mark Cuban’s remarks from the 2025 Forbes Healthcare Summit)

Katalin Karikó: The scientist who won the Nobel Prize for her contributions to mRNA vaccines grew up in a one-room home in Hungary without running water. After being demoted from a tenure-track position at UPenn, she became an executive at BioNTech, which co-developed a COVID-19 vaccine with Pfizer.

Noubar Afeyan: With his family, the Armenian healthcare entrepreneur and venture capitalist who founded Flagship Pioneering fled Lebanon in the 1970s; they rebuilt in Montreal from scratch. (See our September 2021 feature)

Mario Capecchi: While his mother was incarcerated as a political prisoner in Germany, possibly at Dachau, during World War II, the geneticist who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the knockout mouse spent his childhood on Italy’s streets.

Joe Kiani: Well before he founded healthtech company Masimo, Kiani’s family lived in a housing project after fleeing Iran; on his own by 14, he funded his own education. (See our interview with Kiani about Masimo’s February 2026 acquisition)

Read the whole list here.

Meet This Year’s 30 Under 30 Europe Science & Healthcare Honorees

For more than a decade, Olivia Ferro, 26, struggled with health issues and a medical system that couldn’t seem to figure out what was wrong with her. She gained weight and suffered excruciating inflammatory attacks that left her with so much swelling and pain that she couldn’t fit into her clothes.

Yet her struggles were repeatedly dismissed by doctors, she tells Forbes, until she was finally diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome and treated with medication. “I was told, ‘Oh, it might just all be in your head,’” she says. “‘It’s just because you’re a girl and girls go through these types of things.’”

These experiences led her and her sister, Chloe, 24, to launch London-based SheMed in 2024. Last October, the company raised $50 million at a valuation of $1 billion to build out a telehealth platform that helps more than 80,000 women best use GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound

The Ferros are just two of the entrepreneurs on this year’s 30 Under 30 Europe list for Science & Healthcare. Aaron Lin, 27, and Hamzah Selim, 28, cofounded Mindstep, which has built an app that acts as a “pocket neurologist” that can screen for potential neurological problems by tracking a patient’s eye movements. And Oleksandr Bondariev, 27, Vitalii Marchenko, 25, and Oleksii Yakubenko, 26, are using AI at their startup, Pleso Therapy, to pair mental health patients in Central and Eastern Europe with the best therapist for their needs. Meanwhile, Angelica Iacovelli, 26, started Nucleo Research to develop AI agents that can automatically extract key information from CT scans to save radiologists time and get cancer patients diagnosed faster.

For the full 30 Under 30 Europe Science & Healthcare list, see here.

Deal of the Week

Bob Langer, the billionaire MIT professor and serial healthcare entrepreneur, cofounded another company today: Duracyte. Backed by $45 million from federal health moonshot agency ARPA-H and spun out of venture studio RBL LLC, the biotech is focused on commercializing a new class of implantable devices designed to produce therapeutic proteins continuously inside the human body. Its goal is to replace the burden of infusions and injections for millions of patients with its device. The company plans to initiate phase 1 trials later this year.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Replimune’s skin cancer drug was rejected by the FDA again, raising new concerns over how the agency is approaching medication approvals.

The Iran war is disrupting supplies of fluoride needed for drinking water.

An upcoming clinical trial will test a procedure to reverse cellular aging as a way of treating glaucoma.

New research suggests chronic inflammation may be a cause of heart disease, opening a door to potential new treatments.

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