5 Best Performing Healthcare Stocks So Far in 2026

2. Erasca, Inc. (NASDAQ:ERAS)

YTD Share Price Gain: 178.2%

Erasca, Inc. (NASDAQ:ERAS) is one of the best performing healthcare stocks so far in 2026. The Fly reported on May 4 that JPMorgan is maintaining an Overweight rating on Erasca, Inc. (NASDAQ:ERAS) and recommends buying the stock at current levels. The firm believes that the stock boasts several catalysts over the coming months and believes that the recent weakness in its shares is overdone. JPMorgan further told investors in a research note that ERAS-0015 has potential for safety differentiation and looks efficacious in non-small cell lung cancer.

Erasca, Inc. (NASDAQ:ERAS) also received a rating update from H.C. Wainwright on April 28. The firm maintained a Buy rating on the stock with a $20 price target, with the rating coming after the company reported preliminary Phase 1 data for ERAS-0015. H.C. Wainwright told investors in a research note that while the data shows a “clear step-up in early efficacy” relative to the pre-readout bar, especially in lung cancer, it is significant to note that ERAS-0015’s safety profile is “directionally favorable but not without caveats.” It added that the dataset is “not fully clean”, and this “introduces tension with the otherwise benign safety narrative and raises questions around attribution and reporting consistency”.

Erasca, Inc. (NASDAQ:ERAS) is a clinical-stage precision oncology company with a focus on the discovery, development, and commercialization of therapies for patients with RAS/MAPK pathway-driven cancers. The company has assembled a wholly owned or controlled RAS/MAPK pathway-focused pipeline that comprises modality-agnostic programs.