Radically different
STAT is co-publishing this with Undark. This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
In 1975, in a medical school classroom in what was then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Predrag Sikiric had an idea that he has pursued for more than 50 years.
Health insurers, providers, and consumer advocates praised the Trump administration’s long-awaited fixes to the No Surprises Act’s arbitration process, but some warned they won’t address its most pernicious problem: the provider gaming that’s costing millions.
The final rule issued Thursday makes changes designed to improve communication between insurers and providers and give Medicare more visibility into their negotiations. Other tweaks are aimed at attacking the problems of ineligible disputes and of arbitration being used as a catch-all instead of a last resort.
“It does make meaningful progress to reduce burdens and streamline, but we need additional action to address some of the underlying incentives that are driving overuse of the process,” said Jennifer Jones, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association’s senior director of legislative and regulatory policy. “We need more to address the egregious award amounts.”
CHICAGO — Patients with high risk prostate cancer that hasn’t spread typically have two standard treatment paths before them. Remove the prostate surgically, or do a combination of radiation therapy and hormone therapy. Now, with the results of a new phase 3 clinical trial, some oncologists believe a third option may soon be laid on the table: surgery with hormone therapy both before and after the operation.
The study, called the PROTEUS trial, found that combining two hormone therapies both before and after surgery was superior to just one hormone therapy before and after surgery in high risk, early stage prostate cases.
There is a range in how prostate cancer experts are interpreting the results, however. Many told STAT that they believed it would lead to a new standard of care, with Emmanual Antonarakis, a genitourinary medical oncologist at the University of Minnesota, calling it a “watershed moment” in prostate cancer in a New England Journal of Medicine editorial.
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.
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Oncologists are capable of some raucous applause, but they don’t bestow it upon just anyone. Today saw one of those coveted standing ovations, and the hoots and cheers were not held for the end.
The plenary may have passed, but ASCO isn’t over yet— we’ll be back tomorrow with our final newsletter installment, and you can catch our virtual recap on Wednesday.
CHICAGO — What if the trick to getting cancer immunotherapy to parts of the world that can’t access it is simply lowering the dose?
A lower-cost immunotherapy approach could extend survival for patients with advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma in resource-limited countries, according to results presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
CHICAGO — Rachna Shroff, a physician and pancreatic cancer expert, was seeing patients at the University of Arizona Cancer Center in April when she heard the striking clinical results about an experimental pill called daraxonrasib. Patients taking the targeted drug lived nearly twice as long as patients offered standard chemotherapy — an outcome never seen before in the pancreatic cancer field.
“Having treated pancreatic cancer for 16 years, I actually started crying in the clinic,” Shroff said at a media briefing. “This is such an incredibly impactful study for our patients.”
On Sunday, detailed results from the daraxonrasib clinical trial conducted by the drug’s maker, the biotech company Revolution Medicines, were presented here at the plenary session of the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The study was published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine.