AACR Report Highlights Gains in Cancer Survival and Prevention

Cancer outcomes have improved substantially over the past 3 decades, driven by advances in prevention, early detection, and treatment. However, these gains have not been shared equally across cancer types and patient populations, leaving significant unmet needs despite decades of research progress.

The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Cancer Progress Report 2026 highlights both the impact of scientific investment and the challenges that remain, including persistent cancer risk factors and uncertainty surrounding future research funding and prevention policy. In an interview with Targeted Oncology^TM, Keith Flaherty, MD, director of clinical research at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and president of AACR, highlighted the report’s most compelling figures and trends, as well as the priorities needed to sustain progress in cancer prevention, research, and patient outcomes.

Targeted Oncology: What do you think are some of the most important highlights or takeaways from the report?

Keith Flaherty, MD: First and foremost, cancer-related mortality is dropping, which is fantastic. If you go back to the 1990s all the way up to now, we've been able to realize about a little over one-third in terms of overall cancer-related mortality decreasing,¹ which feels great and impactful. What's behind that is a mix of prevention, early detection, and improvements in therapy.

In that same time period, the 5-year survival rate following an initial cancer diagnosis has risen from about 50% to now 71%.¹ That gives us a lot of encouragement that the public investment in cancer research that began in earnest in the 1970s then continued to build and compound in the years since. The translation of that investment in foundational cancer science research has clearly led to better recognition of cancer risk factors and [thus] allowed us to dial up our prevention strategies. But similarly, and particularly recently, we've been increasingly developing more technologies for earlier detection. And then the therapeutic armamentarium, I think, is a very easy example to point to, where that public investment in research has now clearly translated into a therapeutic armamentarium that accounts for a lot of that difference.

I'll end with this topline number: If you just focus on patients with the most advanced cancers—so metastatic cancer—of the most common solid tumors…the 5-year survival rate from about the mid-1990s to the roughly mid-2020s has gone from about 17% to 36%.¹ The reason I highlight that number is because that's leaving aside advances in prevention and early detection.

Those trend lines continue to be, on the one hand, very encouraging; on the other hand, we're not done. We still have a way to go in terms of meeting all of the unmet needs that distribute broadly across cancer. A very simple point to land on is that the progress that we have made has been quite uneven in terms of different cancer types and subpopulations, typically molecularly defined subpopulations within cancer types. We still have a lot of work to do across the spectrum of cancers, where we've got subgroups of patients for whom we’re still not moving the needle substantially.

What does the report highlight about the role of cancer prevention in driving these numbers?

We recognize that about 40% of cancers arise from modifiable risk factors.¹ Smoking still tops that list; just under 20% of all cancers are still attributable to smoking.¹ So, we have work to do there, and tobacco control continues to be at the center of our considerations on the policy side. I think what's encouraging is that the rate of smoking continues to decrease. We're just below 10% now in terms of adults who smoke,¹ and that's the lowest number since smoking became popular in the mid-20th century. That's gratifying, but as the number implies, still a way to go to eliminate that significant contributor to cancer risk. We've had a steady eye on the use of e-cigarettes in terms of their potential to lead to conventional cigarette smoking…particularly in young people.

Obesity contributes [to the risk of cancer] substantially. This is where we have a particular eye on GLP-1 [glucagon-like peptide-1] agonists and their potential positive impact for the cancer population, but we’re still in the very early days of understanding that impact and how that impact might distribute across cancer types. In terms of where we might see GLP-1 agonists moving the needle in terms of mediating a decrease in cancer incidence, I think even though we know of this association between obesity and cancer, it's a little hard to anticipate how that biology is going to play out.

Lastly, I would say HPV [human papillomavirus] vaccination and its rollout, particularly in the US and other well-resourced countries, is clearly having an impact. We're seeing that evidence continue to mount as HPV vaccines are [increasingly] widely deployed, first and foremost for cervical cancer, but there are other HPV-related cancers that we're hopeful will be impacted as well. Globally, about [7.5%] of all cancers are HPV-related,¹ so seeing HPV vaccination become more widespread, not only in the US but across the globe, we think, is a critical prevention priority.

What does the report highlight about the role of science policy in improving patient outcomes?

I think anyone involved in cancer research pays attention to congressional support of NIH [National Institutes of Health] and the National Cancer Institute. More specifically, I think most…are aware of the fact that there were proposals in the initial budgeting process to cut the NIH budget quite substantially. That's been true for the past 2 years, but gratifyingly, our members of Congress, in a bipartisan way, have held fast to the public commitment to continue funding cancer research and biomedical research more broadly, and we've seen essentially flat budgets come out of the budgeting process as opposed to the proposed 20% decreases.

Separately, there's been a recent focus on the Office of Management and Budget [OMB], which is the federal office that essentially is the gateway for disbursement of federal funds. There have been proposed changes to rules by which the OMB operates, which would put a new gate in the way of grants that have been scored well and supported for funding at NIH. [This would] basically create another layer of administrative, nonscientific review that could block the disbursement of funds that have been already approved by our trusted scientific bodies within the federal government. There's been a focus on trying to advocate for that rule to not go through. It's been delayed but is still on the table over the months to come. Advocacy there is still foremost in our minds.

Lastly, I think an important point is that the US Preventive Services Task Force hasn't met now for a year and a half, and so no new evidence has been considered and adjudicated when it comes to any of the areas that I've [discussed]. This includes how to best administer HPV vaccines despite continued emerging evidence on terms of dose and schedule of those vaccines, as well as other important topics and area prevention. In the policy domain, that's another one that we're still trying to raise awareness about.

REFERENCE

1. Primm KM, Blackman E, Zaidi SK, Sengupta R, Sansbury BM. AACR Cancer Progress Report 2026. Clin Cancer Res. 2026;32(19):4246-4249. doi:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-26-3009.