A Record Decline in Cancer Death Rates; The Immunotherapy Revolution And How It’s Changing Cancer Treatment

Since Richard Nixon declared a "war on cancer" and signed The National Cancer Act of 1971 hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on the search for a cure to this elusive disease. In addition to massive funding efforts, millions of scientists, researchers, doctors, and patients have dedicated their lives to curing cancer. Yet despite this collective drive by the medical community millions of patients have continued to succumb to this deadly disease.  However, for the second year in a row, measurable clinical advances have been made in several cancers thanks to new therapies and treatment improvements.

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While the mortality rate for certain cancers has been steadily declining for the past several years many cancers, such as lung cancer, continued to have high mortality rates and poor outcomes. The initial progress made by "the war on cancer" was largely driven by effective public health campaigns such as early detection, screening, and risk factor mitigation. In fact, it is estimated that reductions in smoking coupled with early detection and screening programs has lead to a decline in the cancer death rate by 31% between 1991 and 2018. In other words, these public health interventions have allowed 3.2 million fewer cancer deaths than would have occurred if rates had remained unchanged from their highest point.  Over time, improvements in chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgical techniques also lead to modest improvements in mortality across multiple cancer types.

Improved Therapies for Lung Cancer

However, new data recently published in A Cancer Journal for Clinicians one of the peer-reviewed journals of The American Cancer Society provides evidence that the cancer death rate continues to fall and for the second year in a row is driven by reductions in deaths due to lung cancer. Unlike with previous interventions, the reduction in lung cancer mortality has been attributed to improvements in treatments and new therapies.

One treatment that has allowed for significant progress in lung cancer is immunotherapy. "Immunotherapies for lung cancer, which won the Nobel prize in 2018, are actually preventing people from dying," Dr. Otis Brawley, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Oncology and Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University, tells SurvivorNet. Brawley previously served as Chief Medical and Scientific Officer for the American Cancer Society. "It is rare that in cancer epidemiology, that you can point to one treatment, and say that overall death rate from all cancers is going down because this one treatment became available. In this case we can do that."

Related: Immunotherapy Has Changed The Game For Lung Cancer

New therapies such as immunotherapy and targeted therapies have changed the landscape in treating lung cancer. These therapies initially showed improvements in patients with advanced and metastatic disease. However, overtime studies proved that these therapies also have benefits in patients with earlier-stage disease. These therapies are now being used in combination with surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy to help cure their disease in the early stages before cancer has time to spread and become advanced.

Dr. Jim Allison, Chair of the Department of Immunology at MD Anderson Cancer Center, talked about the effectiveness of combining immunotherapy as a complementary treatment to traditional "targeted" therapies like chemotherapy and radiation for many types of cancer. Simply put, he says: "We now know it works… and so it's something out there that can offer patients a bit of hope."

Related: After Immunotherapy, Imaging Test Results Can Be Misleading

It has been 50 years since The National Cancer Act of 1971 was signed into law and the war on cancer rages on. However, patients and providers alike are realizing new hope as improvements in therapies once again drive lung cancer death rates lower and reduce the overall death rate from lung cancer for the second year in a row.

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