The First of Four Stories on The Cancer Moonshot and Its Impact: “Prevent and Detect”
Most of the fellow cancer patients I’ve met in my life have had days during treatment that are dark, painful, confusing and simply overwhelming. On those days, we tend to shut down, go through the motions and try like heck to just make it through the day.
But the good news is that most days are in fact not like that. Most days, the cancer fighters I know are brave and kind and grateful. They work closely with their doctors, nurses, technicians and others who are taking care of us.
We all have the survivor instinct. Since I was diagnosed with stage IV non-Hodgkin’s follicular lymphoma 27 years ago, there have been some truly awful times. But there have also been so many fascinating, inspirational, positive, beautiful ones. And I have so many brilliant and compassionate friends in this community, both the patients and the doctors and scientists.
It’s been a long road since I was first diagnosed. I never thought I’d live this long and beat cancer three times. But I admit that I began to wonder if there would ever be any truly game-changing new treatments for cancer. Things were moving so slowly.
But about 6 or 7 years ago, a light clicked on in my head. It felt to me like a real tipping point. The new trials felt different. They were more knowing, with more potential to heal and less potential to harm.
All the tireless work in the lab had begun to reach the clinical stage, and since then many of these new treatments are indeed now keeping patients alive longer and better. And so many more are coming soon.
It’s fair to say that 2024 will be the most exciting year in modern cancer treatment history with liquid biopsies and new, better ways of killing cancer including new immunotherapies and AI and so much more.
After mountains of hype, the cancer science community is getting a much better understanding of how cancer works in the body and how we can beat it.
Just take a look at CAR T immunotherapy. It is a remarkable treatment that three months ago saved my life. I had been in remission for more than 20 years.
CAR T, a so-called “living drug,” was showing remarkable results in trials for people with blood cancers like me. And now it’s showing remarkable early responses in glioblastoma (brain cancer), which leads me to President Biden and his Cancer Moonshot initiative.
It’s taken what some people might describe as an eternity to get to this point. But scientists are finally getting the upper hand. It’s true. And that should give everyone who reads this real and sustained hope.
These breakthroughs are what President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot is all about. And this month, they are getting even more ambitious and optimistic as Biden this week declared April as National Cancer Prevention and Early Detection Month.
“This move by the Cancer Moonshot 2024 initiative to invest in detecting cancer early is a very important milestone. Our experience developing medicines for cancer over the past few decades has shown that intervening early may give the patient the best opportunity for a cure or a long-term remission,” said Sanjeev Redkar, President & Co-Founder of Apollomics, a clinical-stage biotech in the San Francisco Bay Area that focuses on developing treatments for difficult to treat cancers.
“Characterization of the tumor’s mutation profile with a tissue or liquid biopsy will also be critical to target the most precise treatment to the right patient,” Redkar added.
We’ve got cancer on the run. And the Cancer Moonshot acknowledges this with its ambitious new initiatives.
The idea of early detection is the holy grail to some extent. This is why two years ago I created the Liquid Biopsy SEE Summit with my colleagues at Teen Cancer America who, like President Biden, saw the writing on the wall.
We subsequently launched the online magazine you are now reading because of the positive advances we are seeing in the cancer treatment universe. It was time.
As Biden announced this past week, “Discovering the cancer in early and largely benign states is an entirely new ballgame. This to me is one way and perhaps the most effective way to beat this menace.”
Biden is doing what no other president or any politician has done. His passion for the moonshot is not a public relations gimmick. It’s real. It’s personal. And he’s taking it to another level this month.
Cancer remains a global menace. There were an estimated 18.1 million cancer cases around the world in 2020 according to the World Cancer Research Fund International. Of these, 9.3 million cases were in men and 8.8 million in women.
The primary objective for Biden is to reduce those bug numbers above by at least 50% over the next 25 years, improve the experience of patients, and ultimately eradicate the disease.
“In addition to new medicines and therapies, we have developed early detection methods and discovered prevention measures that extend and save lives,” Biden said in a press statement.
“Studies have shown that over 30 percent of cancers diagnosed today could be prevented through methods like decreasing environmental and toxic exposures to carcinogens and making lifestyle changes like reducing tobacco use and improving nutrition. Still, cancer is the second-leading cause of death in our country.”
Young people, too, need to become part of this movement, because they are getting cancer more often and that is changing the age when patients should begin to get checked. These tests are getting so much easier and so much more effective.
To quote an ‘old’ phrase…”just do it!”