The End of the "Undruggable"? How RAS Research Is Opening New Possibilities for Patients
- A major shift in cancer science: Once considered impossible to target, RAS—an abnormality found in up to 30% of cancers—is now the focus of a growing wave of new therapies, thanks to breakthroughs in chemistry, biology, and drug development.
- Potential impact across multiple cancers: Because RAS mutations occur in cancers including pancreatic, colorectal, and lung cancer, successful RAS-targeted treatments could expand options for patients facing some of the most difficult-to-treat diagnoses.
- Cautious optimism for the future: While these medicines are still investigational, Dr. Shannon Morris of Erasca says the field has reached a turning point, expressing confidence that approved RAS-targeted therapies are on the horizon and could ultimately help patients across several tumor types.
For decades, RAS was considered one of cancer medicine’s greatest unsolved problems. Scientists knew that abnormalities in the RAS pathway played a major role in driving some of the deadliest cancers—including pancreatic, colorectal, and lung cancers—but they couldn’t find a way to target it.
Read MoreRAS mutations are among the most common cancer-driving abnormalities. According to Morris, “RAS is mutated in up to 30% of cancers. So pancreatic cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer, ovarian, gastric, endometrial—you name it, if there’s a cancer out there, there’s going to be patients who have abnormalities in RAS.”
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Erasca was founded in 2018 around a simple but ambitious idea: that advances in science had finally created an opportunity to tackle this long-standing challenge.
Morris said the company emerged through a collaboration between CEO Dr. Jonathan Lim and renowned RAS biologist Dr. Kevan Shokat. “There has been this amazing transformation in science,” she said. “We are now able to develop drugs to target this thing called RAS.”
The progress has been years in the making. “Essentially over the last 20 years, what has happened is our science has gotten better, our technology has gotten better, we’ve gotten better,” Morris said. “There’s been some serious breakthroughs in chemistry [and] biology, and that’s led to the ability to actually develop drugs that can now bind to RAS and inhibit it from working.”
While many of these therapies remain investigational, the optimism surrounding the field is unmistakable. Erasca is evaluating its lead programs across multiple tumor types, reflecting a broader hope that targeting RAS could benefit patients regardless of where their cancer began.
Morris is confident about where the field is headed.
“We are going to have a drug that’s approved,” she said. “We’re going to have it approved in pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer. That’s what we’re going to have.”
For patients and families facing cancers that historically have had limited treatment options, the rise of RAS-targeted therapies represents something that once seemed impossible: a new generation of medicines designed to attack one of cancer’s most elusive drivers.
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