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Cancer Patients Are Waiting Longer to Start Treatment

The time between cancer diagnosis and treatment has grown over the last decade, according to a study in JAMA Surgery. Researchers examined health records from more than 2.7 million people who had stage I through stage III breast, colon, lung, pancreatic, gastric or esophageal cancer. The analysis included patients diagnosed between 2012 and 2023 who received surgery. The median time from diagnosis to first treatment increased for every cancer studied. In breast cancer, for example, the median rose from 34 days in 2012-2015 to 45 days in 2022-2023; in lung cancer, it rose from 41 to 53 days. Longer waits were more common among patients covered by Medicaid, those with lower incomes, Black patients, those traveling farther for care, and those treated at academic medical centers, STAT reported. Longer waits do not necessarily translate into worse outcomes, and some additional time may reflect appropriate multidisciplinary evaluation, molecular testing or treatment planning. However, researchers pointed to broader strain on the system, including insurance preauthorization requirements and a shortage of oncologists, as possible contributors. “Across every cancer we studied, patients are waiting longer today than they were a decade ago,” senior author Tim Donahue, a surgical oncologist at UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles, told STAT.

Medicare Denials May Limit Access to Appropriate Cancer Drugs

Nearly 1 in 5 cancer drug claims initially denied by Medicare Part D plans are overturned on appeal, according to a study in JAMA Network Open. Researchers analyzed 4,952 second-level appeals for cancer medications that were filed between 2020 and 2024. These appeals were decided by independent reviewers under contract with Medicare, not by the insurance plans that issued the original denial. The appeals covered a range of cancer types, most commonly blood cancers, prostate cancer, digestive system cancers, and breast cancer. More than half of the appeals were for targeted therapy, with another 20% for hormone therapy. Overall, about 1 in 5 denials were overturned. But when a drug had been prescribed as approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the reversal rate climbed to roughly 3 in 5, Healio reported. “This suggests that Part D plans may be making decisions that deny people with cancer access to potentially clinically appropriate medications,” Youngmin Kwon, a health policy researcher at Vanderbilt Health and the study’s lead author, told Healio.

Daraxonrasib Makes It Way to Patients

Cancer centers are starting to offer patients access to daraxonrasib, an experimental drug for metastatic pancreatic cancer that has not yet received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. The treatment is being offered to patients as part of the Food and Drug Administration’s expanded access program after a study, published May 31, 2026, in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed the drug nearly doubled median overall survival—from 6.7 to 13.2 months—among 500 patients with previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer. Under the expanded access program, a doctor can request the drug through its manufacturer, Revolution Medicines. Potential recipients are registered through an online portal and delivered the drug if they are approved by an institutional review board and the FDA. Revolution supplies the drug itself at no cost, but participating hospitals absorb the cost of the required safety monitoring and paperwork, which Alan Sandler, Revolution Medicines chief development officer, said can amount to a few thousand dollars per patient. “Both sides have to bear some costs,” Sandler said in an article on Medscape. Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City, which launched its program in late June with about 15 patients, is among the centers taking on that expense. “There is definitely an administrative burden and a financial burden to the institution,” said Vaia Florou, a medical oncologist at Huntsman, who added that the center is absorbing those costs given the study’s findings for people with few treatment options. In addition to the other expenses, she noted that research coordinators are assigned to people receiving the drug in order to record safety information and side effects. “We know it works. We are excited to offer it to more patients,” Florou told Medscape.