Month: February 2016

World Cancer Day

World Cancer Day happens on February 4th. It is an international day to spread awareness of cancer and to help encourage the prevention of cancer. The day was founded by the Union for International Cancer Control. UICC is a non governmental organization that is membership based and was founded in 1933. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, the organization, which is a parent organization of World Health Organization, is striving to help the global health community accelerate the fight against cancer.

Part of UICC’s mission is to bring together the global cancer control community. A World Cancer Congress is held every two years for members and partners to learn, share, and discuss. A group of key meetings is also scheduled for Europe, Latin America and Asia with the Global Roundtable Series. A World Cancer Leaders’ Summit is also held every year dedicated exclusively to increasing global cancer control. Health leaders as well as leaders of international business take part. World Cancer Day is part of this mission in order to promote and raise awareness and education about cancer. This day helps unite the world and puts pressure on governments and people around the world to take action and do everything they can to increase research and funding towards curing cancer.

From 2016 until 2018, World Cancer Day’s tag line is “We Can. I Can.” The goal in these next two years is to explore how individuals as well as a collective of people can contribute to reduce the global burden of cancer. Cancer affects us all in different ways, and because of this we each have the power to take different actions in order to reduce the impact this terrible disease has on families and communities.


Support World Cancer Day

One way to help is to reduce the risk of cancer in oneself. It’s important to make healthy lifestyle choices and understand that early detection saves lives. This can help prevent an individual by decreasing their chances of cancer as well as inspire those around them to do the same. Challenging perception and creating healthy environments educates and benefits all. Improved access to cancer care is extremely important and along with shaping policy changes and mobilizing our networks to drive progress will definitely make a difference. It is also important to share your story which can help inspire others and give those that are experiencing similar concerns some support. We have to all make a case for investing in cancer control and research. Working together for increased impact is a goal of World Cancer Day. Together, we can reshape the future and develop a cure for each and every cancer affecting millions worldwide.

A “Moonshot,” Immunotherapy, and Progress on Cancer Treatment

On February 4, the world comes together in the fight against cancer with World Cancer Day, a global event aimed at savings millions by raising awareness and education of the disease, while pressing the government to take action.

In the United States, 2016 kicked off with President Obama announcing that during his last year in office, Vice President Joe Biden would be heading up the cancer “moonshot” initiative. The cause is personal for the vice president, who lost his son, Beau Biden, to brain cancer in May 2015.

In a memorandum, the president pointed out that while cancer is already a leading cause of death, cancer incidence is only expected to increase in the coming decades. The moonshot initiative aims to accelerate progress toward prevention, treatment, and, eventually, a cure for cancer.

Part of the initiative is that the FDA would speed approvals of promising drug combinations. Other ideas for the moonshot: immunotherapy and increased access to clinical trials.

Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses the body’s natural defenses to fight the disease by targeting the immune system. Immuno-oncology drugs are promising and have generated impressive outcomes. The American Society of Clinical Oncology recently announced immunotherapy as the clinical cancer advance of the year.

Research in 2015 found that immunotherapies improve outcomes with reduced adverse effects for a number of cancers, including difficult-to-treat cancers and glioblastoma, the deadliest form of brain cancer.

This is not the first time the Obama administration has put the spotlight on cancer. Last year, during his State of the Union speech, the president announced his precision medicine initiative. Precision medicine is a type of customized healthcare that takes into account genes, environment and lifestyle.

Precision medicine has become important in treating cancer. Now when doctors attack the disease, they are often armed with knowledge about molecular and genetic makeup. The foundation of precision medicine is targeted therapy, which took off in the 1990s and is currently the focus of much cancer development.

Although there is still a long way to go before we find a cure for cancer, it is clear that the pace of cancer innovation has picked up speed and much progress has been made in the last decade.