In recent years, more and more cases of cancer are being detected, but treatments and outcomes are also improving.
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Lourdes Monje moved to Philadelphia at age 25 to change careers and become a teacher. But then a trip to the doctor for a lump turned into a diagnosis of stage 4 breast cancer.
“Everything changed from that point on,” they said. (Monje identifies as gender nonbinary.) “Everything became focused on making sure the cancer didn’t continue to spread, even though we knew it was spreading very quickly.”
Monje felt hopeless, but her oncologist explained that new treatments were much more effective than a generation ago, and that proved true: New targeted therapies for breast cancer were starting to work. The drugs had defeated all but one tumor in Monje’s lung.
American Association for Cancer Research annual report, released Wednesday, points to a rapidly changing — and mixed — disease landscape. On the one hand, scientific advances are helping to identify and treat cancer. Death rates fell by a third between 1991 and 2021, according to the report, which shares the latest data on cancer incidence, mortality, and survival rates, as well as updates on cancer research. But at the same time, cancer is becoming more common — and it’s affecting people at younger ages.
Lourdes Monje with their dog Tofu
Lourdes Monje
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Lourdes Monje
Four years after her diagnosis, Monje, now 29, teaches part-time and is grateful for her stability and the prospect of living many more years.
“I feel like my quality of life is pretty good…even though I thought I was going to die,” Monje says.
Monje’s story is an example of both good news and bad news when it comes to cancer. People in her situation have access to new life-extending treatments that were unavailable to previous generations, but cancer rates are on the rise, especially among young people.
Better treatments and detection have made even extremely deadly cancers like lung cancer or melanoma much more survivable, said Jane Figueiredo, a researcher at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles and one of the report’s co-authors. The report notes that the Food and Drug Administration approved 15 new cancer treatments between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024.
“New therapies, including immunotherapy, have been very successful against a number of different cancers,” she said.
Similarly, tools like artificial intelligence can scan patient databases to identify common features of cancer, for example, helping to identify existing drugs that might treat a person’s specific disease.
In other words, Figueiredo says, cancer research has never progressed so rapidly in finding new treatments.
But at the same time, rising rates of obesity and alcohol consumption, along with environmental factors, are likely to significantly increase cancer rates in young people under 50.
In the United States, 40% of cancers are linked to modifiable risk factors, including excessive alcohol use, according to the report.
Cancers such as colon cancer are becoming more common and more deadly. among young people.
“This is really worrying; these are individuals in the prime of their lives,” Figueiredo said.
Cancer is no longer considered a disease of the elderly. “These are individuals who are trying to advance their careers. They may be taking care of children or family members, trying to save money, and they often don’t recognize some of their symptoms.”
All of these trends also mean that more Americans are living with and surviving cancer. Three decades ago, survival was relatively rare; cancer survivors made up 1.4 percent of the population three decades ago, but now make up 5 percent. That equates to 18 million Americans living with a past cancer diagnosis.
