Research is inching us closer to cures for blood cancer every day – among them, therapies that unleash the immune system, reprogramming of T-cells to track down cancer cells, and personalized treatments based on a patient’s genetic make-up.
Survival rates for patients with many blood cancers have doubled, tripled and even quadrupled since the early 1960s. Cures for many patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and Hodgkin lymphoma have been achieved, and the five-year survival rate for children with ALL climbed from 3 percent to approximately 90 percent. The survival rate for myeloma patients more than tripled in the past decade.
Yet about one third of patients with a blood cancer still do not survive five years after their diagnosis. And unlike many other diseases, there are no means of preventing or screening for blood cancers.