There’s never been a better time to have cancer.
That’s not meant to trivialize the second-leading cause of death in the U.S., a disease that takes 1,500 lives a day. It’s meant to highlight the improved survival rates cancer patients enjoy today, and to underscore the promising research underway that gives hope for the future.
Although the “War on Cancer” has often been deemed a failure, the five-year survival rates for many types of the disease present a compelling picture. Today, your chance of surviving acute lymphoblastic leukemia, cancer of the blood, is 94% vs. just 4% in 1962. People with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma had a survival rate of just 7% nearly 40 years ago; today it’s more than 8 out of 10. A malignant brain tumor was most assuredly a death sentence in 1962 while today 85% of patients survive the disease.
The statistics aren’t nearly as good for all types of cancer. However, the age-standardized U.S. cancer death rate has declined by 16% since the death rates peaked in 1991 and by 9% since passage of the National Cancer Act in 1971
Certainly, the pace of progress against cancer isn’t what we’d all like it to be. But it’s important to keep in mind that the war against the disease is still in its infancy. Moreover, cancer is a tough nut to crack.
Besides the improving survival rate, another source for optimism is the number of cancer drugs currently being tested by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Right now, nearly 900 medicines and vaccines are in development — all in either clinical trials or under Food and Drug Administration review, according to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturer’s Association. Included in that total are 98 for lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S., and 91 for breast cancer, which is expected to strike more than 200,000 American women each year.
With innovation comes rewards, and from an investor standpoint cancer drugs could rescue big drug makers from the $50 billion in sales from current drugs that will lose patent protection in the next three years. Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), the world’s biggest drug company, has 18 cancer drugs in clinical trials, including the promising lung cancer treatment crizotinib. Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) has a half-dozen drugs in testing against different cancers and could get important data on them and possibly a couple of approvals this year. Three of those already are on the market for at least one use, the newest being skin cancer drug Yervoy for skin cancer.
As expected, other members of Big Phama are prominent on the list of companies with cancer drugs in testing, including Merck (NYSE:MRK), Abbott (NYSE:ABT), AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN), GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), Lilly (NYSE:LLY) and Novartis (NYSE:NVS).
But some of the most promising medicines belong to the lesser-knowns, like Aveo (Nasdaq: AVEO), which is testing its kidney cancer treatment tivozanib, and Ariad (Nasdaq: ARIA), whose drug ponatinib is now in a pivotal Phase II clinical trial as a treatment for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia.
Cancer is obviously a huge and costly health issue. Those companies that develop effective treatments that increase survival – or even cure the disease – are certain to be compensated handsomely.
