Experimental RAS inhibitor shows promise for NRAS-driven melanoma

For the roughly one in four melanoma patients whose tumors carry NRAS mutations, the failure of immunotherapy has long meant the end of meaningful options — a silence where medicine had no answer. Researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute are now reporting that daraxonrasib, a RAS-targeting compound already celebrated for doubling survival in pancreatic cancer, caused something rarely seen in preclinical models: NRAS-driven tumors actually shrank. The finding does not yet constitute a cure, but it represents the opening of a door that, for many patients, had appeared permanently closed.