Xavier Martinez, writing for The Wall Street Journal under the headline “Why the Drugmaker Behind a Pancreatic Cancer Breakthrough Stayed Independent” (paywalled; Apple News+ link): Earlier this year, an oncology biotech with no drugs on the market—just promising research—was attracting takeover interest. Revolution Medicines stayed independent. This week, that bet paid off. The 12-year-old drugmaker, more commonly known as RevMed, had spent much of its existence trying to solve a scientific puzzle that had stumped some of the industry’s leading researchers. It successfully targeted a common cancer mutation, resulting in a drug that nearly doubled how long people with pancreatic cancer survived—a remarkable breakthrough for a notoriously deadly disease. Now that the Food and Drug Administration has approved its new drug, Rasonque, the Redwood City, Calif., biotech is taking on its next challenge: figuring out how to quickly bring the drug to the thousands of patients desperate to take it. […] RevMed is set on doing this on its own. In a matter of months, it has built its first-ever sales force, distribution network and reimbursement operation from scratch. It has struck deals to make the drug overseas and is planning to invest in several manufacturing lines to guard against bottlenecks. […] Wall Street expects Rasonque—which costs more than $477,000 for a year’s supply—to generate more than $1 billion in sales as soon as next year. No doubt those companies are quietly kicking themselves.