TIME experts name vaccines and immunotherapy promising in the fight against cancer
At the TIME100 Health Leadership Forum in New York, United States, oncology specialists discussed progress in cancer prevention and treatment. As TIME reports, participants named vaccines, immunotherapy, early disease detection, and prevention as promising areas.
Funding and accessibility of therapies
Shane Jacobson, CEO of the American Cancer Society and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, said that important discoveries had become possible thanks to philanthropic investments and federal funding in the United States. According to the American Cancer Society, one in three men and women in the country receives a cancer diagnosis during their lifetime.
Jacobson noted that the encouraging results of the mRNA cancer vaccine development reported by Moderna and Merck a month earlier were the result of decades of research, accumulated knowledge, and studying failures. He also stressed that new medicines and therapies must be accessible to all patients; otherwise, their potential will be limited.
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Immunotherapy and early detection
Andrea Cercek, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, said that vaccines and immunotherapy can harness the capabilities of the immune system to fight tumors. She recalled the results of a 2024 study involving patients with a certain type of rectal cancer: after six months of treatment with an immunotherapy drug, no participant had detectable tumors. The patients subsequently did not need chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or surgery.
According to Cercek, her team is expanding the research to apply a similar approach to other types of cancer and avoid more invasive treatment. Answering a question about the possibility of curing cancer, she described early detection and prevention as the likely foundation for such an outcome. Jacobson added that this is not about one universal treatment method, but about several different ways to overcome cancer.
