Reforms pending at USPSTF, plus, FDA rejects promising melanoma drug for the second time

The Cancer Letter’s coverage of HHS-led overhauls of foundational scientific institutions continued last week with two unrelated stories pointing to continued disarray amongst public health leadership.In this week’s In the Headlines, Claire Marie Porter, Sara Willa Ernst, and Jacquelyn Cobb, reporters with The Cancer Letter, talk about 1) HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promising to reform the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force by replacing medical generalists with medical specialists, and 2) FDA rejected a drug for treating advanced melanoma, RP1 (vusolimogene oderparepvec)—for a second time—on April 10.USPSTF is an independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention that systematically reviews the evidence of effectiveness and develops recommendations for clinical preventive services.“What's at stake is this group kind of quietly shapes a huge part of American healthcare,” said Claire. “Their recommendations determine what happens in your routine doctor visits, so everything from cancer screenings to preventive counseling, and under the ACA, the Affordable Care Act, they decide what insurers have to cover for free.”Experts say Kennedy’s changes would cripple the task force’s ability to apply the principles of evidence-based medicine and undermine the scientific credibility that has made the panel a cornerstone of preventive care in the U.S.“There are 16 members on the panel. Five are rotating out this year, I think they serve a 4-year term, and he wants to replace them with medical specialists, which is a really big shift, because since 1984, the Task Force has been intentionally built around primary care doctors and methodology experts and not disease specialists,” Claire said. “And the idea behind that is that you want people on the panel who can look at the data broadly, not folks who are deep in one lane.”And FDA’s rejection of the melanoma drug, RP1, took the field by surprise.“The data is really robust. So, when you look at the data and you look at some of the comments that they had in the complete response letter, a lot of people were just kind of dumbfounded,” said Sara. “I heard from one oncologist that they were flabbergasted. I talked to a patient advocate that said that there is a lot of disappointment about this rejection. This is a Melanoma Research Foundation, and at least 75 patients have reached out in the few weeks since the rejection saying, ‘Hey, I really oppose this, and I wish it went a different way.’”The concern about FDA’s handling of the Replimune’s drug are a part of broader worries about inconsistency in the agency’s decisions (The Cancer Letter, March 13, 2026). At least nine other companies have reported surprising regulatory decisions from the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research in recent months, according to The Wall Street Journal. Stories mentioned in this podcast include:By adding specialists to USPSTF, Kennedy would reshape the functioning and decisions of the influential health panelFDA’s second rejection of Replimune’s melanoma treatment stirs worry among oncologists, patientsBenjamin Ebert, Amy Gladfelter, Stephen Liberles, and Pardis Sabeti are among new members of the National Academy of SciencesA transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20260506-hhs/