Allen Chankowsky, Owner of MBC Marketing, shared on LinkedIn:
“The fight against rare cancers requires bold thinking and innovative approaches. But meaningful progress must begin with world-class leadership and visionary stewardship.
This week, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) launched its Rare Cancers Initiative at their Special Conference in Cancer Research: Breaking Barriers in the Fight Against Rare Cancers. This is an ambitious global effort to unite researchers, dismantle barriers, and accelerate progress in the rare cancer community. Kudos to Dr.Lillian Siu and Patrick Tan, MD-PhD and the AACR team for spearheading this critical project.
Why devote this effort to cancers that, individually, affect relatively few people? Because the “rare” cancer population is not small when viewed in aggregate.
Rare cancers account for approximately 25% of all cancer cases. Together, that represents an enormous population of patients who deserve the same scientific attention, investment, and urgency afforded to patients with more common cancers. Yet research and drug development systems remain mostly designed around larger patient populations and conventional clinical trial models. Rare cancer patients face the resulting consequences: fragmented knowledge, inaccessible trials, limited evidence, and far too few treatment options often leading to outdated standards-of-care with low rates of success.
The impact of these consequences is patients feeling isolated, overlooked, and abandoned.
With the launch of this unique AACR initiative, rare cancer patients have reason to look toward a better future that is built on coordination, collaboration, and the conviction that no life should count less because a diagnosis is uncommon.
TargetCancer Foundation and their TCF-001 TRACK clinical trial have been devoted to the plight of the rare cancer patient journey for many years and it’s incredible to see how the AACR recognizing this unmet need of enormous proportion will now amplify the message globally.”
More posts featuring Allen Chankowsky on OncoDaily.
