Top 4 Cancer Care Predictions and Trends for 2023 and Beyond

The burden of cancer disease is a reality; nonetheless, the cancer care landscape has evolved in the past few years —

“we're continuously witnessing some incredible advances relating to screenings and treatments, shifting the paradigm of cancer care in the years to come.”??

Constant research will continue to be our ally as new breakthroughs revolutionize the future of cancer care, and as we continue to draw attention to the importance of cancer screenings. This is critical, especially after the unfavorable impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on them, as it led to sharp decreases in the use of cancer screening tests. Research findings are helping us gather extensive knowledge about the biological processes involved in cancer onset, growth, and spread in the body. And on the other side, screenings, for some common cancer types, such as cervical, colorectal, lung, and breast cancer, are crucial and have the potential to save lives and decrease the burden of cancer.???

Having said that, let’s dive into my predictions of how the horizon of cancer care will evolve and how it impacts early diagnosis, prevention and treatment.??

1.As the ticking time bomb is slowly going off, screening guidelines are dropping:??

The pandemic heavily impacted cancer screenings, which had a dramatic drop during that time. An estimated 9.4 million screening tests that normally would have taken place in the United States during 2020 didn’t happen, according to a study published by JAMA oncology. Back in 2021, we predicted that delayed screenings because of COVID-19's impact were a ticking time bomb with a 10-year fuse. We now have evidence to confirm the ticking time bomb is slowly going off as we are dealing with the consequences of more and more patients with advanced diseases.???

For this reason, we are redefining cancer screening guidelines to apply a personalized approach. Back to 10 years ago the screening guidelines for colorectal cancer began at age 50, male or female, and if you had a history in your family of colon cancer, then it would be moved back to age 40. If you ask me, I believe it will move even earlier, as we continue to understand why they’re showing up earlier.??

Screenings are a big component of cancer prevention, and without them, we are not going to pick up those patients early as we need to.??

2. Patients presenting with advanced-stage cancers at diagnosis:???

As early-onset cancers remain a reality and become an emerging global epidemic, what we’ve noticed over the past decade is that younger patients are being diagnosed with colon cancer as early as late 20s to early 30s. The same thing is beginning to occur with younger women who are presenting breast cancer.??

In two particular areas, breast cancer and colorectal cancer, we witnessed patients presenting with more advanced disease after the pandemic. In colorectal cancer, we saw approximately a 12-13% higher number of patients presenting with stage 4 or more advanced disease post-COVID-19.??

But why would that be? Well, during the pandemic there were no virtual screening colonoscopies, resulting in approximately 12% or 13% higher number of patients presenting with stage 4 or more advanced disease. There was also a dramatic decrease of 74% of mammograms conducted during the height of the pandemic.??

3. Detecting Cancer Through Blood Tests:??

There are four major areas of cancer screenings currently available – colonoscopy for colorectal cancer, mammograms for breast cancer, PSA for prostate cancer and low dose CT scan for lung cancer (in patients who have a history of smoking).???

Meanwhile, as we analyze these past years' findings and look forward to the years to come in cancer care, we will continue to see blood tests as a cancer detection method. The liquid biopsy test, for patients who have not presented any symptoms nor a family history of cancer, is a non-invasive diagnostic modality on the horizon. It has been in preparation or testing for more than a decade but it’s only now coming into more common use.? Specificity and sensitivity are still being defined. There are still loose ends that need to be studied in terms of types of cancer and stage of the disease, but I believe liquid biopsies will become more common as we accumulate more data, and the tests improve. ??

4. Leveraging the body’s own defense system to treat cancer:???

Another significant area I’ve mentioned is a new mechanism for treating cancer: immunotherapy, which had been in the lab for 40-50 years, and at present, it has finally blossomed into a promising therapy.

“In the years to come, we will continue to rely on turning the body’s own immune system on the tumor and fighting the cancer, and not only for patients with liquid tumors but for solid tumors as well.”???

We’ve evolved from surgeries, to radiation, to chemotherapy and now, targeted therapies, as we discover that certain cancers have specific mechanisms that we can target with a specific drug, with no side effects.???

We’ve moved forward as we tap into the body’s own immune system and cells of immunity to fight the tumor. Currently, cellular therapy is pretty much only designed for liquid tumors – blood cancers like multiple myeloma, lymphoma, and leukemia. We’re moving into immunotherapy and cellular therapy for solid tumors like breast cancer, pancreas cancer and colon cancer. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re getting better.???

For patients with cancer care, the future is often uncertain, but we’re on the right track. Innovations and cutting-edge technologies that deliver personalized and precise cancer care continue to give us hope and will allow us to shift our promise to a reality – just as cancer patients deserve.??