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WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health advisers on Wednesday endorsed a blood test designed to spot signs of various cancers in apparently healthy people while warning that it’s far from clear how well the technology works. Grail Inc.’s Galleri test doesn’t diagnose cancer but instead, with a single blood draw, looks for a signal that someone may have one of a long list of tumors. Those who receive a positive result need additional care to tell if they’re really sick. The Food and Drug Administration’s advisory panel voted 7-2, with one abstention, that the DNA-based test offers more potential benefits than...

He’s the Doogie Howser of the dorms! A 13-year-old Long Island whiz kid with an Einstein-level IQ has been accepted to NYU’s master program — after overcoming cancer and Tourette’s syndrome, according to school officials and his mom. Pint-sized prodigy Joe Petraro-Hyppolite plans to study sports medicine at the university next fall and will likely be the school’s youngest grad student ever, according to reports. “My IQ is 168,” Joe Petraro-Hyppolite, of East Rockaway, told CBS. “Whenever I tell people, it’s like, ‘Oh, Young Sheldon, Doogie Howser.’” By comparison, Albert Einstein’s IQ is believed to have been around 160, which...

The key to slowing deadly brain tumors could be right on our plates. Gliomas are a group of tumors that develop in the brain or spinal cord and can range from slow-growing — like the one Busy Philipps was diagnosed with this year — to highly aggressive, like the ones John McCain, Beau Biden and Sophie Kinsella had. New research from the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health may have found a way to slow down the growth of these tumors — and it could come down to what people eat. A study published Tuesday found that high-grade...

There is plenty Republicans and Democrats can disagree about when it comes to Joe Biden. His health shouldn't be one of them. The former president has been fighting an aggressive form of Stage 4 prostate cancer that spread to his bones, and some of the recent updates from his family have been difficult to hear. On Tuesday, Americans finally got some good news. Biden announced that the radiation treatment he underwent last fall “worked as intended,” while revealing that he remains active and is continuing to work on his memoir.That's a welcome update regardless of anyone's politics. Biden, now 83,...

Spanish researchers achieve complete tumor regression in animal models, opening new possibilities for one of medicine's deadliest cancersIn a promising development for pancreatic cancer treatment, scientists at Spain's National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) have successfully eliminated pancreatic tumors in mice using a triple-combination therapy. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on January 25, 2026. This represents a significant advance in tackling pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), one of the deadliest cancers. PDAC has one of the lowest survival rates, with over 10,300 new patients diagnosed annually in Spain alone, and a devastating five-year...

Dolly Parton‘s reps have revealed her cause of death. The iconic singer died after a “brief battle” with cancer at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, her reps said Tuesday. “Our beloved Dolly Parton spent her life and career bringing joy, laughter, hope and integrity into everything she touched. Her unmatched generosity reached the lives of countless people whom she would never meet, yet she was always there to offer a helping hand,” the statement from her reps to People magazine read.

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved a groundbreaking pancreatic cancer drug that experts predict will transform treatment for the notoriously deadly disease. The drug, Revolution Medicines’ Rasonque, or daraxonrasib, was approved for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer who have already tried a prior treatment, such as chemotherapy, the agency said. In a late-stage clinical trial of 500 patients, people who got the drug lived about twice as long — 13.2 months, on average — compared with people who got chemotherapy. Dr. Rachna Shroff, chief of the division of hematology and oncology at the University of Arizona Cancer Center...

The US Food and Drug Administration announced today that it has approved a groundbreaking new treatment option for pancreatic cancer. Manufactured by Revolution Medicines, daraxonrasib made headlines earlier this year when former US Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., shared details about his experience with the drug — which left his skin bloody and “bubbling” but is also giving him more time with his family amid his battled with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Moderna stock more than doubled Wednesday after the biotechnology company and Merck announced that their personalized mRNA cancer vaccine significantly delayed the return and spread of melanoma in a late-stage clinical trial. The breakthrough could give Moderna its most important commercial opportunity since COVID-19, strengthen Merck’s dominant Keytruda franchise and open the door to an entirely new class of individualized cancer treatments. However, investors should recognize that the companies have released only topline results, while detailed efficacy data, regulatory decisions, manufacturing economics and overall-survival results remain outstanding.Moderna’s long-promised second act may finally be coming into focus.Shares of Moderna jumped approximately...

Northwestern University economist Chuck Manski studies decision-making amid uncertainty. That prepared him better than many other cancer patients to decide whether to stay on an immunotherapy treatment that was making him very ill. For six months in 2022, Manski received monthly infusions of nivolumab to fight advanced melanoma. The drug ruined his thyroid gland, he said, requiring him to go on a special medication for the rest of his life, and caused severe dryness in his eyes, lips, and mouth. The Food and Drug Administration’s protocol for the drug called for an entire year of treatment, but Manski said his...

Shares of Merck (MRK) and Moderna (MRNA) spiked in the premarket on Wednesday after the companies said that their jointly developed messenger RNA-based cancer therapy, intismeran autogene, succeeded in a late-stage trial for patients with melanoma, a type of skin cancer. The Phase 3 INTerpath-001 trial was designed to evaluate intismeran in combination with Merck's (MRK) blockbuster anti-PD-1 therapy Keytruda in more than 1,100 patients with stage IIB-IV melanoma whose cancer has been completely resected. According to its topline data, INTerpath-001 met its primary endpoint of recurrence-free survival and a secondary endpoint of distant metastasis-free survival, marking the first late-stage...

Inspired by the work of the RNA Therapeutics Institute at UMass Chan Medical School and the development of the COVID vaccine, Marcus Ruscetti, PhD, and Chaitanya Naimesh Parikh, PhD’26, have developed an immunotherapy using a cocktail of messenger RNAs (mRNA) that could potentially be transformative for pancreatic cancer treatment. The study, published in Nature Communications, combines immune cytokine and tumor-associated antigen mRNAs into a single injection to treat pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Approximately 50 percent of mice with pancreatic cancer treated with the mRNA immunotherapeutic cocktail saw complete tumor responses and more impressively, remained disease free for a year, even after...

Viagra Plus Statins Tied to Better Cancer Survival Odds, Study Suggests In A Nutshell * Viagra’s active ingredient, sildenafil, appears to trap cholesterol inside cancer cells, potentially limiting their ability to spread. * In mice, sildenafil reduced metastasis across breast, lung, and colon cancer models. * Health records from more than 40,000 male cancer patients linked combined sildenafil and statin use to a 31% lower risk of death within five years, compared to using neither drug. * The findings are observational and come from lab and animal studies, so clinical trials are needed before doctors could prescribe the combination for...

The former president's son described the Stage 4 cancer as 'very painful' and 'very debilitating' during an interviewFormer President Joe Biden's prostate cancer has spread to other parts of his body and is causing him significant pain, his son Hunter Biden revealed during a Friday interview."The cancer has spread, metastasized into his bones and further," Hunter Biden told the BBC in an interview which aired Friday. "It’s very painful and it’s very debilitating in many respects," he added."It’s really sad to watch," Hunter Biden said. "The only thing that I’d say about my dad, about his health right now, is...

When cisplatin came on the market in 1978, it revolutionized cancer care. Carboplatin, a related chemotherapy drug with fewer side effects, soon followed in 1986. Together, these two drugs have saved countless lives and are prescribed for up to 20% of cancer patients to treat ovarian, bladder, breast, lung, and other types of cancer. “They're the backbone for treatments for a lot of different types of cancer,” says Dr. Jacob Reibel, a medical oncologist at Dartmouth Cancer Center. And yet, in recent years, when some hospital pharmacists have gone to source these chemo drugs for patients, they’ve had difficulty. They’ve...

Learn how Viagra trapped cholesterol inside cancer cells and why statins may strengthen the effect.A man might take Viagra for erectile dysfunction and a statin for high cholesterol, treating two problems that seem to have nothing to do with cancer. But if he is later diagnosed with cancer, he may already be taking two medications linked to a lower risk of dying within five years. In a study published in Cancer Research, researchers found that sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, trapped cholesterol inside cancer cells and reduced lung metastases in several mouse models. Men who filled at least three...

Vitale was first diagnosed with cancer in 2021, when he revealed he had melanoma.Longtime college basketball announcer Dick Vitale says he is making positive strides after announcing in April that he had been diagnosed with cancer for the fifth time. The 87-year-old Vitale said on social media Wednesday that recent blood tests came back “very good” and that the immunotherapy treatments that he has been receiving are “very effective in wiping out the cancer.” Vitale was first diagnosed with cancer in 2021, when he revealed that he had melanoma. He also was diagnosed with lymphoma and, after being declared cancer-free,...

The billions of mRNA vaccine doses that went into arms worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic build on clinical trial data confirming the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine technology now poised to personalize cancer treatment, according to a new review. Dr. Manish Sadarangani, director of the Vaccine Evaluation Centre at B.C. Children's Hospital, and his co-authors combed through published data from laboratory research, clinical trials and real-world surveillance from Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines from January 2020 through December 2025 to assess their scientific and public health impacts. In Tuesday's issue of the medical journal The Lancet, the researchers highlighted...

William Shatner is opening up about his battle with Stage 4 melanoma alongside his daughter, Melanie Shatner Gretsch, who survived Stage 4 breast cancer. In a new interview, the 95-year-old actor and his daughter spoke exclusively with People about their diagnoses, treatment journeys and how surviving cancer changed their outlook on life. Shatner said his daughter was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer at age 60 in 2022 after discovering a lump in her breast. About a year later, Shatner learned he had Stage 4 melanoma. "I went to an oncologist ... and they operated almost immediately with Stage 4...

While reviewing literature for an upcoming article, I encountered three studies that yielded surprising results. Each included a caveat similar to: “The study was not designed to show the agent improved cancer survival, however…” Despite this, the first two trials revealed an unexpected and substantial clinical benefit: a significant increase in tumor shrinkage. The first study investigated the use of epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG)—the active compound in green tea—to reduce radiation-induced esophagitis in patients with esophageal cancer. In the past, oncologists have cautioned against using antioxidants in patients with active cancer, fearing that these supplements might protect the tumor from the...