Hello Health Rounds readers! Today we report on a cardiology advance that will be welcomed by patients - a common, major heart surgery performed for the first time without cracking open the chest. We also highlight a discovery that could prove beneficial for patients with one of the most aggressive cancers, and a small study aiming to help problem cannabis users cut back.

Among our breaking news stories: Trump unveils healthcare plan featuring direct payments over insurance subsidies; US FDA delays drug reviews in new voucher program after safety, efficacy concerns; US HHS reverses cuts to safety research agency and US healthcare spending soars to over $5 trillion in 2024.

Also: US biotech sector poised for 2026 rebound as IPO interest revives; US, European regulators set principles for 'good AI practice' in drug development; pharma sector doubles down on AI; Trump signs bill allowing whole milk back in school meals and South Carolina measles vaccination rates drop to 20%.

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Millions of Americans are facing higher healthcare costs in 2026 as open enrollment for most federally subsidized Obamacare plans closes on Thursday and Congress remains divided on whether and how it should reinstate generous COVID-era tax credits.

For the first time ever in a human, doctors have performed coronary artery bypass grafting without having to cut through the patient's chest, similar to how many aortic valve replacement procedures are now done.

The CABG procedure re-routes blood around a blockage in an artery carrying blood to the heart. In this case, the surgical tools were inserted and threaded through a blood vessel in the patient’s leg, according to a report published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Interventions.

The results suggest that, in the future, a less traumatic alternative to open-heart surgery could become widely available for those at risk of coronary artery obstruction, researchers said.

“Achieving this required some out-of-the-box thinking but I believe we developed a highly practical solution,” said team leader Dr. Christopher Bruce of the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Emory School of Medicine.

The procedure is called ventriculo-coronary transcatheter outward navigation and re-entry, or VECTOR.

The patient in this first case was not a candidate for traditional open-chest CABG because of heart failure and old, poorly functioning artificial heart valves.

Six months after the procedure, the patient showed no signs of coronary artery obstruction, meaning the VECTOR approach was  a success.

Further testing in more patients is necessary before VECTOR is used more widely, but its successful debut is a major step in that direction.

“It was incredibly gratifying to see this project worked through, from concept to animal work to clinical translation,” Bruce said.

Newly identified tumor cell characteristics will improve the ability of doctors to track some of the most aggressive breast cancer cells as they travel through the bloodstream to spread to other organs, researchers say.

Triple-negative breast cancer, among the most aggressive of all cancers, is hard to treat because its cells lack the hormone proteins on their surface that are targeted by standard therapies. Furthermore, triple negative tumors are more likely to metastasize than other forms, but tracking the tumor cells as they move has been challenging.

But researchers have now identified four new cell-surface proteins that significantly improve the identification of triple-negative breast cancer cells as the cells circulate in patients’ blood, they reported in Cancer Research Communications.

They first focused on mouse models of metastatic triple-negative breast cancer and then confirmed their findings in patient samples.

“We were excited with the results with blood from patients with metastatic TNBC,” study leader Dr. Chonghui Cheng of Baylor College of Medicine said in a statement.

“In these patients, tumor cells were frequently undetectable using standard markers but became clearly visible when we applied the new marker combination,” she said.

Being able to reliably detect circulating triple negative breast cancer cells could help doctors monitor disease progression and treatment response more accurately, the researchers said.

“Another exciting finding is that the newly identified markers are also expressed in other cancer types, suggesting that this strategy could improve... detection across multiple cancers,” Cheng said.