Health Experts on the Major Breakthroughs in Fighting Cancer

Leading experts in cancer research reflected on the significant strides made in tackling the disease, along with the work that remains to be done toward finding a cure, at the TIME100 Health Leadership Forum in New York on Thursday.Resources have been the key toward making important discoveries, said Shane Jacobson, the CEO of both the American Cancer Society, which sponsored the event, and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. Philanthropic investments and federal government funding, he continued, have allowed scientists and oncologists to make the progress we see today in cancer prevention and treatment. Cancer is “omnipresent” Jacobson said. In the U.S., one in three men and women will receive a cancer diagnosis sometime during their lives, according to the American Cancer Society.“It has been, historically, such a devastating disease,” he said. “We knew so little about it that it has garnered resources—and it takes resources to tackle most of the problems we face in healthcare.” Developments in tackling cancer—such as the encouraging results of an mRNA cancer vaccine that were announced by Moderna and Merck last month—stem from “decades of progress, decades of new ...