Erasca

Erasca, Inc. is a San Diego-based clinical-stage precision oncology company whose stated mission is to "erase cancer." The company focuses on the RAS/MAPK signaling cascade, which it describes as one of cancer's most commonly mutated pathways, affecting approximately 5.5 million people each year worldwide. Its pipeline is described as modality-agnostic and designed to target the pathway at multiple nodes, and the company's science pages reference a "MAPKlamp" approach alongside its RAS/MAPK pathway work [0][1][7].

As of a May 2022 interview, Erasca said it was researching and developing 11 precision oncology programs and characterized its portfolio as the deepest RAS/MAPK pathway-focused pipeline in the industry. Lead clinical programs at that time were ERAS-007, an ERK inhibitor, and ERAS-601, a SHP2 inhibitor, evaluated as monotherapy and in combinations through trials including HERKULES-2 (combinations with the KRAS G12C inhibitor sotorasib in non-small cell lung cancer), HERKULES-3 and FLAGSHP-1 in gastrointestinal cancers [7]. Earlier in its history, Erasca also described building an internal artificial intelligence drug discovery platform called OPRA (Oncology Pattern Recognition Algorithm) intended to analyze large-scale datasets to prioritize discovery strategies [4].

The company operates two related entities: Erasca Ventures, a wholly owned subsidiary established in March 2021 to make equity investments in early-stage biotechnology companies aligned with its mission, and the Erasca Foundation, a 501(c)(3) private foundation established in May 2021 and funded with 1,093,557 shares of common stock (then about 1% of capital stock) in conjunction with the IPO [2][3].