Cancer Survival Stats Reach Highest Rate Since Analysis Began

You may have seen some much-needed good news that came out this week: the American Cancer Society released data showing that, for the first time in 75 years of analysis, the proportion of people living at least five years after a cancer diagnosis has reached 70 percent. Fifty years ago, half of cancer patients didn’t reach the five-year survival mark.

This is a real victory, and it is tied to a lot of important trends that may not be obvious to people who don’t spend their lives thinking about science and medicine. I’ve put together a list of key takeaway points to help us see some of the nuance behind that 70 percent number.

Nitty-gritty numbers

When we’re presented with a sweeping statement like “70 percent of cancer patients are surviving at least five years,” it’s easy to picture all of these people as one giant bloc, achieving the same progress. In reality, survival rates vary wildly across cancer types. Comparing the latest data to outcomes from the mid-’90s, for instance, we see huge progress for liver cancer, where five-year survival rates jumped from 7 percent to 22 percent; for myeloma, where rates improved from 32 percent to 62 percent; and lung cancer, with survival rates increasing from 15 percent to 28 percent. Those are some of the deadliest forms of cancer, so significant progress is real cause for celebration.

Cancer researchers crunching the numbers also looked at how survival rates have changed based on the cancer’s stage at diagnosis. For the worst types, metastatic cancers, five-year survival rates reached 35 percent, doubling the 17 percent survival rate seen in the mid-’90s.

While it’s great news that 70 percent of all cancer patients are surviving at least five years, there are many types of cancer where outcomes are nowhere near that positive.

Treatment options

The number of therapies and other interventions available for cancer today is truly dazzling. Global efforts to bring new treatments to market have led to advances like immunotherapies that harness the power of a person’s immune system to fight cancer, targeted therapies designed to work best for tumors with specific genetic variants, mRNA-based cancer therapies, and other novel approaches. Some of these therapies are putting cancer into remission — in some cases even fully curing cancer — for patients who otherwise would have had little hope. On the prevention side, vaccinations for cancer-causing viruses such as HPV have been remarkably effective at reducing the number of cancers that develop.

Early detection

Any treatment option is more effective in early-stage cancers, which is why early detection has been a huge driver of improved outcomes as well. Screening programs for breast, colorectal, and prostate cancer have been instrumental in allowing doctors to spot cancer when it’s more amenable to treatment. But there are other types of cancer where early detection is desperately needed. For example, there are very effective screening tools for lung cancer, but outdated guidelines about who should be screened have limited the benefits of this approach. For other cancers that are often detected at advanced stages — such as pancreatic, kidney, liver, and ovarian cancers — there aren’t widely used screening programs at all. On the bright side, there’s no shortage of biomedical companies working to enable earlier detection for many types of cancer. (Full disclosure: I work with some of these companies, but nothing I’ve written here would specifically benefit any of them.)

It has also been easier to target high-risk individuals with more aggressive screening regimens thanks to genetic tests that identify people who are more likely to develop cancer, such as mutations in the well-known BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.

Public funding

Scientific advances have driven much of the progress in cancer outcomes, and it’s public funding that has driven the science. The benefits that cancer patients have experienced are a direct result of robust, dedicated funding for cancer research. The recent Cancer Moonshot initiative and other federal grant programs have been critical for improving survival rates. With many such programs at risk of disruption under the current administration, the outlook for continued improvement is not nearly as positive.

There are so many more future cancer breakthroughs that are almost within reach, but we may only be able to realize them if federal funding programs remain stable and predictable.