Radically different
Nature Medicine, Published online: 31 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-026-04455-x
As presented at the 2026 ASCO Annual Meeting, in a prespecified interim analysis of a phase 1a trial of IMA401—a new bispecific TCR-based T cell engager that binds a MAGE-A4/MAGE-A8 peptide presented by HLA-A*02:01—encouraging safety and a preliminary efficacy signal were observed in patients with head and neck cancers and melanoma, including those treated with both the engager and anti-PD-1.
A type of computed tomography (CT) imaging known as SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) in combination with a new imaging agent could allow clinicians and researchers to visualize inflammation in the lungs to better target treatment to patients.
Interstitial lung disease includes over 200 conditions that scar and inflame the lungs. Researchers estimate around 650,000 people in the U.S. have this kind of lung disease and 50,000 new patients are diagnosed in the U.S. each year with interstitial pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) alone. The main problem with interstitial lung disease is that doctors currently cannot reliably tell inflammation from scarring without invasive diagnostic procedures.
In this Phase II study, presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, Druin Burch, consultant physician at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, U.K., and colleagues tested whether a radioactive imaging agent, 99mTc-maraciclatide, injected into patients imaged with SPECT-CT could detect inflammation in the lungs.
“The molecular imaging agent 99mTc-maraciclatide binds to αvβ3 integrin, which is upregulated in vascular endothelial cells during angiogenesis, a cardinal feature of inflammation,” explain Burch and colleagues. “The agent has demonstrated diagnostic promise in other inflammatory conditions such as endometriosis.”
Overall, 15 people were scanned as part of the study: five healthy controls, five with IPF, and five with fibrotic hypersensitivity pneumonitis, which involves more active inflammation. The researchers found that those with fibrotic hypersensitivity pneumonitis had nearly double the inflammatory signal on imaging of healthy controls. Patients with IPF were somewhere between these two groups, which might be expected as IPF is known to be more fibrotic than inflammatory.
“While current imaging techniques can provide a structural view of fibrosis in the lungs, there is no reliable, non-invasive way to identify inflammation,” commented Burch in a press statement. “A tool that could detect inflammation in interstitial lung disease patients could help pinpoint those most likely to respond to anti-inflammatory therapy.”
To reach a wider group of patients a Phase III study is required to test the imaging agent in more people. 99mTc-maraciclatide has FDA Fast Track status for use in patients with interstitial lung disease, so if a larger study is successful it could be available to patients in less than five years.
“Being able to differentiate the fibrotic and inflammation stages of interstitial lung disease is not just beneficial to inform treatment decisions, but also for the development new therapies,” said Burch. “This approach has the potential to unlock a wide range of anti-inflammatory drugs.”
The post Imaging Technique Can Differentiate Lung Inflammation from Fibrosis appeared first on Inside Precision Medicine.
CHICAGO — The biotech company Revolution Medicines has begun sending its experimental, life-extending treatment for pancreatic cancer to physicians and their patients under an early access program authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, the company’s CEO, Mark Goldsmith, told STAT.
“We are now shipping the drug,” he said, speaking Friday evening at a STAT event held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
The drug, daraxonrasib, is not yet approved. But patients with pancreatic cancer have been clamoring for it since mid-April, when Revolution reported the striking results of a Phase 3 clinical trial. Patients treated with daraxonrasib lived nearly twice as long as patients offered standard chemotherapy — an outcome unprecedented in the pancreatic cancer field.
The treatment landscape for multiple myeloma has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past decade, driven by a growing arsenal of immunotherapies that harness the patient’s own immune system to fight cancer. Now, results from a large international Phase III trial suggest that one of the newest entrants to this class, the bispecific antibody teclistamab, may be poised to move even earlier in the treatment paradigm.
The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, showed that teclistamab significantly improved progression-free survival and depth of response compared with standard therapies in patients with relapsed multiple myeloma.
The study represents one of the strongest demonstrations to date that chemotherapy-free immunotherapy can outperform conventional approaches even after only a limited number of prior treatments.
Teclistamab belongs to a rapidly expanding class of therapies known as bispecific antibodies. Unlike traditional monoclonal antibodies, bispecifics are engineered to bind two targets simultaneously. Teclistamab recognizes both BCMA, a protein expressed on multiple myeloma cells, and CD3 on T cells, effectively bringing immune cells into direct contact with tumor cells and triggering targeted cancer cell killing.
The therapy has already shown substantial activity in heavily pretreated patients with advanced disease. However, investigators wanted to determine whether moving the drug earlier in the disease course could provide even greater benefit.
“Now we have chemotherapy-free immunotherapy options for patients whose myeloma has relapsed for the first time,” said C. Ola Landgren, MD, chief of the Sylvester Myeloma Institute and senior author of the study. “We are seeing very deep responses and long clinical benefit from these therapies. This is part of a much bigger transformation happening in myeloma care.”
The Phase III MajesTEC-9 trial enrolled 593 patients across 24 countries. Participants had relapsed multiple myeloma after one to three prior lines of therapy, representing a patient population increasingly encountered in routine clinical practice.
Approximately three-quarters of patients had already become refractory to commonly used treatments, including immunomodulatory drugs such as lenalidomide and anti-CD38 therapies such as daratumumab. These patients typically face diminishing treatment options and shorter durations of disease control.
Patients were randomized to receive either teclistamab or standard treatment regimens.
The results demonstrated a clear advantage for the bispecific antibody.
After 18 months of follow-up, nearly 70% of patients treated with teclistamab remained free from disease progression, compared with only about 27% of patients receiving standard therapies.
The magnitude of benefit exceeded what many clinicians have come to expect in relapsed myeloma, where treatment resistance often emerges rapidly.
Beyond delaying disease progression, teclistamab produced remarkably deep responses.
Nearly two-thirds of treated patients achieved complete remission, meaning no evidence of disease could be detected using conventional testing methods.
Another highlight was the frequency of minimal residual disease (MRD) negativity, an increasingly important endpoint in multiple myeloma research. MRD testing uses highly sensitive techniques capable of detecting tiny numbers of remaining cancer cells that standard assessments might miss.
Many patients receiving teclistamab achieved MRD-negative status, suggesting that the therapy may be capable of driving deep eradication of disease.
“To see that this drug is so efficacious and so safe across patients from all these locations worldwide is a very strong signal,” Landgren said. “To see that in patients who have been exposed and refractory to commonly used myeloma treatments is very important.”
The results reflect a larger evolution occurring throughout multiple myeloma treatment.
For decades, chemotherapy served as the backbone of therapy. Today, however, treatment increasingly revolves around immune-based approaches including monoclonal antibodies, CAR T-cell therapies, and bispecific antibodies.
Researchers are not only developing new immunotherapies but also moving them earlier into treatment algorithms, where the immune system may be more intact and capable of mounting stronger anti-tumor responses.
The success of teclistamab in earlier-relapse patients supports this strategy and raises the possibility that bispecific antibodies could eventually become standard components of frontline treatment.
Despite the encouraging efficacy results, teclistamab is not without challenges.
Because the therapy activates T cells and alters immune function, infection remains one of the most important safety considerations. The risk is particularly pronounced during the first several months of treatment, when immune suppression can occur as part of the therapeutic response.
To mitigate this risk, patients typically receive antiviral and antibiotic prophylaxis, undergo routine monitoring of immunoglobulin levels, and may receive supplemental immunoglobulin infusions when necessary.
Investigators reported that these risks were manageable with appropriate monitoring and supportive care, consistent with previous studies of bispecific antibodies.
The success of teclistamab is part of a broader effort to transform multiple myeloma from a chronic relapsing disease into one that can potentially be controlled for extended periods, or perhaps one day cured.
Researchers are already investigating whether teclistamab and related bispecific antibodies can be incorporated into even earlier treatment settings, including newly diagnosed disease.
“For me, the goal is to develop curative strategies,” Landgren said. “We are working toward treatments that can either eliminate the disease entirely or control it for very long periods while minimizing the burden on patients and preserving quality of life.”
As bispecific antibodies continue to demonstrate increasingly durable responses, the field is moving closer to that goal. The MajesTEC-9 results suggest that immune-based therapies are no longer merely alternatives to conventional treatment, they may be emerging as the new standard for many patients with relapsed multiple myeloma.
The post Teclistamab Outperforms Standard Therapy in Relapsed Multiple Myeloma appeared first on Inside Precision Medicine.
A study into the responses of AI chatbots to everyday medical questions found that nearly 76% of the responses were accurate, according to investigators at Penn State University. Their research, published as a preprint in arXiv, found that while the AI chatbots could deliver useful information, the error rates remain high enough that they shouldn’t replace physicians for either diagnosing or suggesting treatments.
“Our work focuses explicitly on healthcare scenarios that the average internet user might ask AI, which is a perspective that prior research into large language models (LLMs) and healthcare hasn’t covered,” said the study’s senior author Amulya Yadav, PhD, associate professor of informatics and intelligent systems at Penn State. “We wanted to understand that if people are using LLMs like ChatGPT as a symptom health checker, like historically we’ve used Google, how accurate is the LLM in answering those queries, and how harmful could those responses be?”
The study examined a shift in how people seek healthcare information online. According to the researchers, “over half of U.S. adults consult online resources for medical advice,” a trend that is particularly prominent in younger adults, with near one-quarter of people under 30 using AI for health-related guidance.
The research was designed to evaluate AI performance in real-world everyday health communication, rather than in controlled testing environments that rely on medical licensing exams or clinical case studies. The researchers wrote that earlier studies “fail to account for the unstructured and often ambiguous nature of general-purpose everyday health inquiries.”
To conduct the study, the Penn State team organized a weeklong “Diagnose-a-thon” competition involving 34 participants, including faculty, staff, undergraduate students and graduate students. Participants submitted 212 prompts describing real or imagined health concerns from both patient and physician perspectives. They were allowed to use one of four publicly accessible AI models: ChatGPT-4o, ChatGPT-3.5, Gemini-1.5 Pro or Llama3-8b.
“One of the strengths of our study is we’re essentially trying to replicate real-world usage of LLMs by telling participants to choose the LLM of their choice and use it as they would on a normal day,” said lead author Bonam Mingole, a doctoral candidate in information sciences and technology at Penn State. “This type of participatory research is so important for understanding how the public uses AI in their daily life.”
Nine board-certified physicians evaluated the AI-generated responses to the prompts using a six-point scale to measure validity, quality of information, understanding and reasoning, and potential harm. About 76% of responses were considered accurate overall and showed that ChatGPT-4o was the most accurate at 84.62%, while Llama3-8b had the lowest at 50%.
The results also showed significant differences across medical specialties. Obstetrics and gynecology and otolaryngology generated the strongest AI performance, with high validity scores and low harm scores. Internal medicine, neurology, and dermatology produced the weakest results, including lower validity and higher risk of harmful responses.
The responses also shined a light on a continuing problem in healthcare research that leads to disparities in care. “The lower quality LLM-generated responses for underrepresented patient populations and rare medical conditions raises concerns about the potential of LLMs to inadvertently exacerbate existing healthcare disparities,” the researchers wrote. They added that addressing these issues “requires more than technical mechanisms, it calls for a broader commitment to equity in the data collection, model development, and evaluation processes.”
How the prompts were written also influenced AI performance. Queries between 60 and 250 characters produced the most accurate responses, while very specific prompts also improved output quality. Interestingly, the physician reviewers perceived greater risk of harm in responses generated from prompts that attempted to be written from a medical professional’s perspective.
To test whether specialized medical training could improve the answer generated by AI, the investigators enhanced the LLMs using Retrieval-Augmented Generation, by training them with medical textbooks, clinical guidelines and peer-reviewed research that is typically included in medical school curriculums.
Performance of the LLMs trained in this way were mixed. The physician reviewers preferred the baseline versions of Gemini and Llama over their medically trained counterparts, while no meaningful preference emerged for the ChatGPT models.
The researchers will now look to expand their study by collecting larger and more balanced datasets of crowdsourced health prompts and looking for ways to discourage overreliance on AI-generated medical advice.
“Like it or not, people will continue to use AI for diagnosing their health problems,” said study co-author S. Shyam Sundar, PhD, a professor in the Center for Socially Responsible AI at Penn State. “By understanding their use patterns and testing the validity of AI performance, our project helps advance literacy on the best and worst uses of AI for medical advice.”
The post AI Chatbots Do Not Consistently Deliver Accurate Health Responses appeared first on Inside Precision Medicine.
And so, another working week will soon draw to a close. Not a moment too soon, yes? This is, you may recall, our treasured signal to daydream about weekend plans. Our agenda, so far, is very low-key. We hope to catch up on our reading, promenade with the official mascots, and take a few naps. We may also manicure the Pharmalot grounds. And of course, we hope to hold still another listening party, where the rotation will likely include this, this, this, this and this. And what about you? The choices are endless this time of year. In particular, the great outdoors are beckoning — trails can be hiked, streets can be walked, country roads can be driven. If this fails, there is always the great indoors. You could cook a fabulous meal, shop for something that looks spiffy, or binge watch on the telly. Or you could be totally zen and do absolutely nothing. Well, whatever you prefer, have a grand time. But be safe. Enjoy, and see you soon…
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recommended updating this fall’s Covid shots to target the XFG variant, a fast-growing strain nicknamed “stratus,” NBC News tells us. The recommendation — from the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee — is meant to help vaccine makers prepare shots for the fall and winter, when Covid infections typically rise. The meeting was the agency’s first since FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned. His resignation did not play a role; the meeting was already on the calendar before he resigned. Makary drew criticism last year after the agency imposed stricter requirements on who could get Covid shots.
Pfizer and China’s Innovent Biologics agreed to a global licensing and collaboration deal worth up to $10.5 billion to develop 12 early-stage cancer medicines, as global drugmakers race to tap China’s booming biotech pipeline, Reuters says. The deal also includes a $650 million upfront payment to Innovent and up to $9.85 billion in potential development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments. The value of such deals in the greater China region rose nearly tenfold from 2021 to an unprecedented $137.7 billion last year. The partnership spans a portfolio of antibody-drug conjugates with novel differentiated payloads and multi-specific antibodies, comprising eight Innovent-originated early-stage assets and four Pfizer-proposed discovery programs.
The World Health Organization identified drugs from Regeneron Pharmaceutical, Mapp Bio, and Gilead Sciences that should be fast-tracked through clinical testing to respond to the current Ebola outbreak, Pharmaphorum notes. The WHO’s independent experts have said Regeneron’s maftivimab, Mapp’s MBP134, and Gilead’s remdesivir should be studied in patients infected with the Bundibugyo form of Ebola currently infecting more than 1,000 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with cases also reported in neighbouring Uganda. At last count, the Bundibugyo outbreak had led to 10 confirmed deaths, with another 223 suspected, although the WHO has said it could be much larger as the virus is thought to have circulated undetected for some time.
Nature Medicine, Published online: 29 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-026-04451-1
Through large-scale genomic analysis, we show that pathogenic germline variants in pediatric cancer-predisposition genes are associated with increased subsequent tumor risk, highlighting their value for counseling and surveillance.
Nature Medicine, Published online: 29 May 2026; doi:10.1038/d41591-026-00028-0
A comprehensive analysis of Indigenous American genomes charts an evolutionary history shaped by unique geographic and cultural environments, climate shifts, and colonization, and reveals natural selection of genes involved in immunity, metabolism and reproduction.