When she heard about a new, experimental drug to treat pancreatic cancer, Rachelle Gardner tried not to get her hopes up.
She wondered: Would she be eligible for the medication? Would her hospital be allowed to give it to her? Would she live long enough to get it?
In late July, her questions were answered. In an exam room at City of Hope Cancer Center Chicago, Gardner shook three light blue pills out of a bottle and, sipping water, swallowed them one at a time.
"To good health and getting rid of that cancer bug!" Gardner exclaimed cheerfully after downing the last pill.
Gardner, a 59-year-old Milwaukee teacher for students who are visually impaired, said the medication has given her "a new sense of hope."
Gardner is one of dozens of patients in Illinois and across the country who in recent weeks have started receiving the experimental medication, which has been heralded as a breakthrough. The drug, called daraxonrasib, does not cure pancreatic cancer, which is one of the deadliest and most difficult-to-treat cancers, but it gives many patients the next best thing: more time.
Typically, once pancreatic cancer spreads in the body beyond the pancreas, patients may only have months to live. But in a recent clinical trial, the drug was given to patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who had already undergone a previous treatment, and those patients lived for a median of about 13 months after being enrolled in the study, compared with a median of about six months for patients who had additional chemotherapy instead of daraxonrasib.
Dr. Evan Pisick, a medical oncologist at City of Hope Cancer Center Chicago, called it the biggest advance in treating pancreatic cancer in decades.
"This is honestly a game changer," Pisick said. "This is the thing that changes what we can offer patients. It's the first targeted therapy we're able to offer them, the first thing other than just giving chemotherapy."
The drug has not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but the FDA is allowing drug manufacturer Revolution Medicines to give the medication to eligible patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who've already tried other treatments, under an expanded access program.
Physicians must submit requests for the medication to Revolution for individual patients. The drug is provided by the manufacturer at no cost to patients who are part of the expanded access program.
"It gives the patients an advantage to not have to sit around and wait because a lot of them don't have that kind of time," Pisick said of the expanded access program.
At City of Hope Cancer Center Chicago, Gardner is one of seven or eight patients beginning to receive the drug, Pisick said. Other Illinois health systems that have started giving the medication to patients in recent weeks under the expanded access program include Advocate Health Care, OSF HealthCare, Endeavor Health and University of Chicago Medicine.
UChicago Medicine was also a clinical trial site for the recent study of the medication.
The drug's ability to lengthen the lives of patients who have tried other treatments is "unprecedented in pancreatic cancer," said Dr. Ardaman Shergill, a medical oncologist and lead investigator of the clinical trial at UChicago Medicine.
"In oncology we are trying to help patients live longer," Shergill said. "If you can extend life, that is golden. That is the goal of treating metastatic diseases." Shergill said patients also reported in the study that their pain, appetite and energy were better with daraxonrasib compared with chemotherapy.
One of the patients who received the drug through UChicago Medicine, Mary Louise McAdams, 84, of Bronzeville, said she was initially told she probably had about six months to a year to live when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2024.
She said she underwent chemotherapy and radiation, but treatment was rough on her body. At one point, she said she had to be hospitalized because of side effects.
When she learned she could get the new drug through the expanded access program, she thought it sounded promising and wanted to give it a try.
McAdams has now been on daraxonrasib for about two weeks.
"I hope I can prolong my life more. I don't know how long but rather than six months to a year longer, I'd like to live as long as possible, as long as I'm functional and able to contribute to my care somewhat. I'm looking forward to some more years of life with my children and grandchildren," said McAdams, who has five children and four grandchildren.
Gardner, who took her medication at City of Hope Cancer Center Chicago in Zion, Illinois, in late July, said she never imagined three years ago, when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, that a new drug might help her live longer.
At that time, Gardner didn't realize anything was amiss until she developed a strange rash on her arms and chest. An urgent care center sent her home with prednisone and Benadryl to clear up the rash, she said.
But the rash didn't improve and she developed jaundice, so she underwent more testing that revealed problems with her liver and gallbladder. Ultimately, she was diagnosed with Stage 1 pancreatic cancer.
She and her fiance were sitting at their kitchen table when she got the call.
"We looked at each other and started crying," Gardner said. She said she thought, "I'm just going to die now. What do we do?"
At a different hospital, Gardner underwent months of difficult chemotherapy and then a complex surgery called the Whipple procedure, which involves removing the head of the pancreas, part of the small intestine, the gallbladder and the bile duct.
She said she was then told to get more chemotherapy and, at that point, decided to seek opinions from other hospitals, including City of Hope Cancer Center Chicago. She was impressed with the hospital and Pisick and decided to stay.
For a time, there was no evidence of the disease in her body. It held off until spring of 2025, when the cancer came back at Stage 4, she said. She began a different type of chemotherapy, and underwent radiation treatment earlier this year.
By May of this year, however, doctors told her that the chemotherapy and radiation would no longer work for her. "Basically, I'm going home for the cancer to beat me," Gardner said. "I'm like, 'Nope, not going to do it.'"
Supporting her conviction was the news that City of Hope Cancer Center Chicago was applying to get daraxonrasib for her and other patients.
Gardner's experience shows the importance of clinical research, said Robert Stone, CEO of City of Hope, which has cancer centers in Illinois, California, Georgia and Arizona.
"It takes so long, at times, to have therapies work their way through the regulatory system, and discovery is happening so fast that, at times, (clinical trials and expanded access programs) are the best treatment option for patients. And this is a perfect example," Stone said.
Now that Gardner has received the medication — which has to be taken every day — she's optimistic about the year to come.
She hopes the pills will give her more time.
More time to go on road trips and try new restaurants with her fiance. More time to teach. More time to spend with her two grown sons and her little grandnieces and grandnephews, who call her Auntie Gaga.
"There's hope out there," Gardner said.