The cancer research has a lot of problems
Exploring the Share of Solid Adult Cancer Therapies in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: The Case of the U.S.
The impact of such investment has been extremely variable. Significant improvements have been made in some adult blood- cancer outcomes, but not in other solid adult cancers, such as breast, lung and urinary tract cancer. The rate of improvements in outcomes for cancer of the upper GI tract is slow.
Surgeries and radiotherapy are just two of the technical expansions we are seeing outside of pharmaceuticals. Surgical oncology has been dramatically changed, not just by the introduction of more advanced minimally invasive surgery, but also robotics. Like cancer drugs, new technologies come with premium pricing, but are also saddled with a lot of real-world implementation issues. There is still a major issue of lack of interoperability between systems for minimally-invasive surgery and some cancer types in low- and middle-income countries. In surgical Oncology, market forces favour affluent patients at the expense of more equitable service delivery can be found in the evidence. The majority of global radiation research is focused on high-income settings and technology innovation, with less than 2 percent focused on implementation.
Every year, a lot of cancer therapies are approved, but they don’t deliver clinically meaningful benefit. Of the 161 approvals for solid adult cancer therapies by the US Food and Drug Administration since 2017, only 35% were graded as delivering substantial clinically meaningful benefit on the European Society for Medical Oncology Scale, a standardized tool for assessing new anticancer therapies.
Harvard University has the top share of cancer research in the world and more than one fifth of its Nature Index output is in this area. The National Institute for Cancer Research, a major funder of cancer research, also has a high Share. Stanford University in California has a Share of 343, despite just 11% of its overall Nature Index output for the period 2018–22 being related to cancer research.
Cancer research grants were allocated by the European Commission in a number of years totalling about $2.5 billion. Around $850 million in grants were funded by the European Research Council.
outliers are highlighted in the chart Cancer research dominates the nature index output from specialist cancer centres. But two in the United States, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, are clear of other specialist institutions on Share.
A report has said that of the 161 approvals for solid adult cancer therapies by the US Food and Drug Administration since 2017, only 35% were graded as delivering “substantial clinically meaningful benefit”. It added that Stanford University in California has a Share of 343, despite just 11% of its Nature Index output for the period 2018–22 being related to cancer research.