AACR’s 2014 Cancer Progress Report Stresses Research Advances and More Federal Funding
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) released its 2014 Cancer Progress Report today, which highlights the quickening pace of drug development and approval, especially in molecularly targeted agents that are leading to increased numbers of cancer survivors. However, the report also warns that research progress is being slowed due to years of budget cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and calls for biomedical research in cancer to be made a national priority.
Highlights from the report showcasing progress in the last year include:
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved six new anticancer therapeutics, five of which are molecularly targeted agents, and new uses for five previously approved anticancer therapies.
- Two imaging agents received new cancer-related FDA approvals, as did a previously approved screening test.
- Patients with some types of cancer now have three or more molecularly targeted treatment options, should their cancer recur or become resistant to the primary therapy.
- Cancer genomics research is the foundation for novel clinical trials designed to accelerate the pace at which new therapeutics are approved for patient care.
- Cancer immunotherapeutics are continuing to yield remarkable, long-lasting patient responses in several types of cancer.
- There now are an estimated 14.5 million cancer survivors in the United States, and nearly 380,000 of these individuals received their cancer diagnosis as children or adolescents.
“As a result of advances like these, Americans today are more likely to survive a cancer diagnosis and then enjoy a higher quality of life than in any other time in history,” said Carlos L. Arteaga, MD, President of AACR and Director, Breast Cancer Program and Center for Cancer Targeted Therapies at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, Tennessee, during a press conference announcing the report’s findings. “The lives of many cancer survivors have been transformed by research that has led to the development of new molecularly targeted therapeutics.”
However, despite the progress made in cancer, the disease represents a growing health-care challenge and financial burden on the country, said Dr. Arteaga. According to the report, the overall economic costs of cancer to the United States in 2009 were $216.6 billion. “When these costs are compared with the NIH and NCI budgets for fiscal years 2014, which are just $30 billion and $4.9 billion, respectively, it underscores the inadequacy in federal funding for cancer research that exists today,” according to the report.
“If policymakers fail to put the NIH back on a path of predictable growth in funding, our ability to support cancer care for the benefit of current and future cancer patients will be jeopardized,” said Dr. Arteaga.
The AACR report concludes with a call to action to the Obama Administration and Congress to “prioritize the growth of the NIH and NCI budgets at a predictable, robust pace by providing annual budget increases at least comparable to the biomedical inflation rate.”
The content in this post has not been reviewed by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Inc. (ASCO®) and does not necessarily reflect the ideas and opinions of ASCO®.
