David Calabrese of OptumRx Talks Top Three Drugs in Pipeline, Industry Trends in Q2

Oncologists should ask in advance about what young patients and their parents want to be told about changing prognoses, a new qualitative study finds

In this month’s episode of Tuning In to the C-Suite, Briana Contreras, an editor of Managed Healthcare Executive, got to chatting with Sanjula Jain, Ph.D., chief research officer at Trilliant Health.

One particular application of AI on the rise at City of Hope is the development of a large language model (LLM) made specifically for oncology.

In this month’s episode of the "What's On Your Mind podcast," Peter Wehrwein, managing editor of MHE connects with the now Chief Clinical Officer of OptumRx Integrated Pharmacies, David Calabrese. In this conversation, David touches on his transition in January as OptumRx’s former chief pharmacy officer and market president of health plans and PBMs to his new role as Chief Clinical Officer where he now focuses more on things such as specialty pharmacy to home delivery — with an overall goal of creating whole-patient care. Throughout the conversation, Calabrese also touched on the market’s hot topic of insulin prices and behavioral health services within the OptumRx community, among other topics.

In a February 2025 Time magazine cover story, Jamie Ducharme reports on this atypical and disquieting trend. Ducharme cites a 79% increase in early-onset cancer diagnoses and a 28% increase in cancer-related deaths in this age group from 1990 to 2019.

In a real-world study, researchers found this data by comparing treatment patterns, healthcare resource utilization, and costs between patients receiving CAR T-cell therapy and those treated with the non-CAR T standard of care.