Significant successes in treating cancer have been achieved over the last 25 years such that some types of cancer (e.g. Hodgkin's, Burkitt's lymphoma, testicular) now have very high response rates, representing a 50–60% decrease in death rate. Also, the anti-hormonal treatments of breast and prostate cancers have significantly increased the disease-free survival and quality of life for cancer patients. Nevertheless, cancer remains a disease of high unmet clinical need where life expectancy can often be short. In 1999, there were over 12 million new cases of cancer diagnosed and 7 million deaths. Cancer is the leading cause of death in Japan and is predicted to be the leading cause of death in the US by 2005. These raw statistics illustrate some of the elements of the scale of the patient need. In addition, the nature of the disease as we know it, through personal experience and through family and friends, is a strong motivator to continuing to persevere with cancer research.
For such a complex disease, it is essential that we tackle it with diverse thinking and practice. The Insight articles illustrate very succinctly the multi-faceted research being done to address this important disease. Our collective research findings and developments are set to change the range of cancer therapies available to patients over the next 10–20 years.
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