Alicia Zhou, Chief Executive Officer of the Cancer Research Institute, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“For decades, cancer was defined by what we couldn’t do.
Today, that story is changing.
The latest data shows a historic milestone: 7 in 10 patients now survive cancer five years or more – a dramatic shift from just a generation ago.
This isn’t incremental progress. It’s the result of decades of investment in science – and in no small part due to advancements in immunotherapy.
This week, I had the opportunity to join a panel with Axel Hoos, Zhen Su, MD MBA and Joe Guidi at Lumanity’s Cancer Progress meeting where we discussed what it would take to engineer the next cancer breakthrough.
Through our discussion, one thing was clear: progress isn’t the same as understanding.
We’re still too often operating in a world of “try and see”- layering combinations, running more trials, hoping signals emerge from noise.
That approach got us here. It won’t get us where we need to go next.
The next breakthroughs will come from something harder:
- Deeper biological understanding
- Better use of data (not just more of it)
- And using AI to navigate complexity – not replace it
Because in immunotherapy, we’re not just targeting tumors – we’re working engineering living cures.
If we want AI to truly accelerate discovery, we need to give it something better to learn from: shared, structured, biologically grounded data.
Read more about what we discussed at Cancer Progress.”
Other article featuring Alicia Zhou on OncoDaily.