Former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse told the New York Times his torso is "chock-full of tumors", and that an experimental drug called daraxonrasib has cut his tumor volume by 76 percent since doctors gave him three to four months to live in December.
Sasse, 54, a Nebraska Republican who left the Senate in January 2023, spoke publicly for the first time about a diagnosis he called a "definite death sentence." The interview, published Thursday, offered a rare, blunt look at what Stage 4 pancreatic cancer does to a body, and at the early promise of a targeted therapy the FDA fast-tracked last October.
The father of three said he takes daraxonrasib orally but described its side effects in stark terms:
"I take it orally, but it's a nasty drug. It causes crazy stuff like my body can't grow skin and so I bleed all out of a whole bunch of parts of me that shouldn't be bleeding."
Despite those side effects, Sasse reported that his pain has dropped roughly 80 percent from its peak. Doctors initially put him on 55 milligrams of morphine after his diagnosis. He now takes about 30 milligrams a day. He said he is around Day 99 since the grim December prognosis and is "doing a heck of a lot better than I was doing at Christmas."
Sasse represented Nebraska in the Senate from 2015 to 2023 before leaving to become president of the University of Florida. He stepped down from that role at the end of July 2024, after his wife, Melissa, was diagnosed with epilepsy. Then came his own diagnosis: Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, discovered last year.
His departure from the Senate was part of a broader wave of Republican lawmakers heading for the exits in recent cycles, though Sasse's move to academia was framed at the time as a step toward a different kind of public service, not a retreat.
By December, the situation had changed entirely. Pancreatic tumors were pressing against his spinal column. Sasse described the back pain as "nuclear." He told the Times he did not even know what caused his facial disfigurement from the disease and treatment, saying the result looked like something produced by "either acid or electric shocks."
He also described being "high as a kite" from medication and enduring "strong waves of desire to puke." None of this was delivered with self-pity. Sasse framed his situation with the directness of a man who has accepted the math.
Daraxonrasib is a targeted therapy designed to slow pancreatic cancer by blocking mutant proteins that fuel tumor growth. Revolution Medicines, the drug's developer, is hopeful it can improve outcomes for a disease that remains one of the deadliest in American medicine.
The numbers tell the story plainly. Pancreatic cancer ranks as the third leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. The National Cancer Institute found that only 13.3 percent of patients diagnosed between 2015 and 2021 were still alive five years later. In 2026, an estimated 67,530 Americans will be diagnosed. Some 52,740 are expected to die from it.
Standard chemotherapy typically produces survival of seven to eight months. Early trials of daraxonrasib showed patients living a median of 13 to 16 months, nearly double. About one-third of patients on the drug alone saw their tumors shrink. Most saw their cancer stabilize or improve.
When daraxonrasib was combined with standard chemotherapy, more than half of patients had their tumors shrink, and 90 percent had their disease under control. Those are early numbers, not final answers. But for a cancer that has long resisted treatment, they represent a meaningful shift.
The political landscape in Washington continues to shift as well, with Republican strategists warning about headwinds ahead of the midterms, a reminder that the party Sasse once served is navigating its own set of pressures.
In October, the FDA gave daraxonrasib one of the first vouchers in a new fast-track program aimed at getting promising drugs to patients faster than the traditional approval process allows. Nine sponsors received vouchers under the initiative.
Dr. Christopher Lieu, a professor of medical oncology at the University of Colorado Anschutz, framed the stakes in an interview with the school's Department of Medicine:
"There are certain diseases where getting access to promising drugs may mean the difference between life and death, and pancreatic cancer is an example of this. There are not enough treatment options, and our patients don't have the luxury of waiting years for any regulatory agency to review data."
Lieu added a note of caution about the program's novelty:
"The idea that the FDA has a pathway for accelerated review is important and exciting, but it's a new program, so I think there's still a lot we'll have to learn from it."
That tension, between urgency and caution, is exactly the kind of regulatory question conservatives have long pushed to resolve in favor of patients. When a man has three to four months to live, the bureaucratic instinct to wait for more data collides with a basic moral reality: the patient may not be around when the data arrives.
Sasse's case is a living argument for the fast-track approach. His tumor volume is down 76 percent. His morphine dose has been nearly halved. He is still here, past the window his doctors gave him.
Sasse did not sugarcoat his condition. He acknowledged that the fight is far from won. The dynamics in Congress have shifted considerably since his departure, with high-profile party switches squeezing the GOP's razor-thin House majority and reshaping the balance of power he once helped maintain.
But Sasse's focus now is elsewhere entirely. He described his outlook with a candor that mixed grit with faith:
"I've continued to feel a peace about the fact that death is something that we should hate. We should call it a wicked thief. And yet, it's pretty good that you pass through the veil of tears one time and then there will be no more tears, there will be no more cancer."
He also acknowledged the limits of the treatment. Sasse used the phrase "too much Whac-A-Mole" to describe the nature of fighting a cancer that has spread throughout his torso. The drug is working, but the disease is relentless.
The Senate that Sasse once served in continues to grapple with weighty questions of its own. But few of those debates carry the weight of the one Sasse now faces every morning, whether an experimental pill and a fast-tracked FDA voucher can outrun a disease that kills nearly 80 percent of those it touches within five years.
Several questions remain open. Where exactly Sasse is receiving treatment has not been disclosed. The specific hospital or medical center running his clinical trial is unknown. The precise date of his diagnosis has not been made public. And the long-term efficacy of daraxonrasib, whether it extends life by months or years, is still being studied.
What is clear is that a 54-year-old father of three, who once held one of the most powerful jobs in American government, is now staking his life on a drug the federal government only recently agreed to review on an accelerated timeline. The early results are encouraging. The side effects are brutal. The disease remains among the deadliest known to medicine.
When the government gets out of the way and lets promising treatments reach dying patients, lives get extended. When it doesn't, the paperwork outlives the patient.