• In 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved 13 new drugs that target cancer.

  • “Cancers claimed 8.0 million lives in 2010, 15.1% of all deaths worldwide, with large increases [since 1990] in deaths from trachea, bronchus, and lung cancers, twice the number of deaths from the next 2 common sites for mortality (liver and stomach),” reported the researchers of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (Lancet 2012;380:2095–128.)

  • Overall U.S. cancer death rates dropped by 1.8% per year for men, 1.4% for women, and 1.8% for children from 2000 to 2009, according to the 2013 Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer. Total cancer incidence rates declined by 0.6% per year for men, remained stable for women, and increased by 0.6% per year for children during that period.

  • President Barack Obama signed the Recalcitrant Cancer Research Act into law. Originally known as the Pancreatic Cancer Research and Education Act, the bill mandates that the National Cancer Institute evaluate its efforts in dealing with recalcitrant cancers with certain survival rates, and focus on ways to improve outcomes.

  • Nine of 12 leukemia patients treated with infusions of chimeric antigen receptor–modified T cells responded to the therapy, scientists in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania reported at the American Society of Hematology's annual meeting in December in Atlanta, GA. Two of the first 3 patients treated in the protocol remain healthy and in full remission more than 2 years after their treatment, the Perelman researchers reported.

  • “More than 85% of the global burden of cervical cancer occurs in developing countries, where it accounts for 13% of all female cancers,” noted Doyin Oluwole, MD, FRCP, executive director of the Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon initiative at the George W. Bush Foundation in Dallas, TX. “Despite these staggering statistics, fewer than 5% of women are screened even once in their lifetimes.”

For more news on cancer research, visit Cancer Discovery online at http://CDnews.aacrjournals.org.

©2012 American Association for Cancer Research.
2012