Leading experts in cancer research reflected on the significant strides made in tackling the disease, along with the work that remains to be done toward finding a cure, at the TIME100 Health Leadership Forum in New York on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Resources have been the key toward making important discoveries, said Shane Jacobson, the CEO of both the American Cancer Society, which sponsored the event, and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. Philanthropic investments and federal government funding, he continued, have allowed scientists and oncologists to make the progress we see today in cancer prevention and treatment.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cancer is \u201comnipresent\u201d Jacobson said. In the U.S., one in three men and women will receive a cancer diagnosis sometime during their lives, according to the American Cancer Society<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has been, historically, such a devastating disease,\u201d he said. \u201cWe knew so little about it that it has garnered resources\u2014and it takes resources to tackle most of the problems we face in healthcare.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Developments in tackling cancer\u2014such as the encouraging results <\/a>of an mRNA cancer vaccine that were announced by Moderna and Merck last month\u2014stem from \u201cdecades of progress, decades of new knowledge, decades of even failure, and learning from that failure to bring forth these kinds of results,\u201d Jacobson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt used to be maybe on an annual basis we would celebrate something significant, but the innovation is moving so rapidly that these celebrations, these big moments, are now almost on a monthly basis, and we should expect that speed to continue,\u201d he said. But, he added, just as important as these advances is ensuring that everyone is able to access the drugs and therapies they need\u2014\u201dotherwise,\u201d he said, \u201cthe innovation falls short of its potential.\u201d<\/p>\n Vaccines and immunotherapy have emerged as powerful tools to fight cancer, said Dr. Andrea Cercek, a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who was a 2025 TIME100 Health<\/a> honoree.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hope \u2026 between vaccines and immunotherapy as well is that they harness the immune system, which is really the most powerful drug we have,\u201d she said. \u201cIt can fight anything as long as it\u2019s equipped to do so and it recognizes something is foreign, and so it\u2019s really that combination that needs to happen for therapy to work.\u201d<\/p>\n Cercek herself has been pioneering immunotherapy drugs to treat cancer. In 2024, she and her colleagues released the findings of their study of patients who had a specific type of rectal cancer, revealing that, after six months of being treated with an immunotherapy drug, none of the patients showed detectable tumors, meaning that none of them needed chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery afterwards.<\/p>\n Cercek has expanded her research, and said during the panel that \u201cwe\u2019re very close\u201d to seeing this kind of treatment being used successfully for other types of cancer so that patients don\u2019t have to undergo more invasive therapies.<\/p>\n TIME senior health correspondent Alice Park, who moderated the panel, closed the discussion with a big question: Will we cure cancer? And if so, what will that cure look like?<\/p>\n \u201cAbsolutely we will,\u201d Cercek replied. \u201cProbably it will be with early detection and prevention\u2014I think that is going to be, ultimately, what cures cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes,\u201d Jacobson said. \u201cAnd I think it\u2019s \u2018cures,\u2019 plural. It\u2019s not one cure, and we\u2019re seeing that now.\u201d<\/p>\n