Fight against cancer is stalling, specialists told at world forum
Learning from the fight against Aids, world forum draws up a 10-point plan to provide treatment and prevention where it is most needed
Progress against cancer is stalling, with the latest targeted cancer drugs failing to live up to expectations and priced so high that treatment is becoming unaffordable even in rich countries, according to experts at a meeting of nearly 100 eminent cancer specialists from around the world.
Much needs to be done, they believe, to improve treatment, care and prevention both in the developed world and in poor countries, where cancer rates are rising even faster. They agreed to embark on an ambitious plan to get essential cancer care to those who are dying early in developing countries, in the same way that Aids doctors took on the fight to get HIV treatment into Africa.
The meeting of the World Oncology Forum, organised by the European School of Oncology, agreed that urgent action was needed on many fronts.
Only a few years ago, many cancer experts thought the arrival of targeted medicines, designed to attack the genetic make-up of the tumour, would make dramatic inroads into cancer deaths. But the excitement generated by targeted drugs, which interfere with specific molecules involved in tumour growth and suppression, has been short-lived.
Doctors reported apparently miraculous results from the use of the BRAF-inhibitor vemurafenib in advanced malignant melanoma, a usually fatal form of skin cancer, said Douglas Hanahan of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research. Within two weeks, the tumours had melted away. "But six months later, [the cancer] is back with a vengeance," he said.
Other drugs working in a similar way - including erlotinib (Tarceva) for a form of lung cancer, bevacizumab (Avastin) for breast, colorectal and other cancers, and sunitinib (Sutent) for renal cell carcinoma and gastrointestinal sarcoma - have also not done so well, said Hanahan.