TIME100 Health Forum: Experts Point to Vaccines, Immunotherapy and Early Detection as Path to Curing Cancer

Vaccines, immunotherapy, early detection and prevention represent the most promising paths toward curing cancer (搜索)搜索该疾病, according to leading oncology experts speaking at the TIME100 Health Leadership Forum in New York on Thursday. The panel, moderated by TIME senior health correspondent Alice Park, weighed the field's rapid progress against the persistent challenge of ensuring patients can access new therapies.

Shane Jacobson, CEO of both the American Cancer Society查看公司主页 and the American Cancer Society Cancer (搜索)搜索该疾病 Action Network, framed the current wave of innovation as the product of sustained investment. Philanthropic contributions and federal government funding, he said, have enabled scientists and oncologists to achieve the progress now seen in cancer prevention and treatment.

The Scale of the Challenge

Jacobson described cancer (搜索)搜索该疾病 as "omnipresent," noting that according to the American Cancer Society查看公司主页, one in three men and women in the United States will receive a cancer diagnosis at some point in their lives. "It has been, historically, such a devastating disease," he said. "We knew so little about it that it has garnered resources—and it takes resources to tackle most of the problems we face in healthcare."

He pointed to the encouraging results of an mRNA cancer vaccine (搜索)搜索该药品 announced by Moderna查看公司主页 and Merck (搜索)搜索该词条 the previous month as an example of how far the field has come. Such developments, he said, stem from "decades of progress, decades of new knowledge, decades of even failure, and learning from that failure to bring forth these kinds of results."

The pace of those results has accelerated markedly. "It used to be maybe on an annual basis we would celebrate something significant, but the innovation is moving so rapidly that these celebrations, these big moments, are now almost on a monthly basis, and we should expect that speed to continue," Jacobson said.

Access as the Limiting Factor

Jacobson cautioned that scientific advances alone are insufficient. Ensuring that everyone can access the drugs and therapies they need is just as important as the discoveries themselves, he said—"otherwise the innovation falls short of its potential." He added that the path forward is not a single universal treatment method, but rather several different ways to overcome cancer (搜索)搜索该疾病.

Harnessing the Immune System

Dr. Andrea Cercek, a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center查看公司主页 and a 2025 TIME100 Health honoree, described vaccines and immunotherapy as powerful tools that work by mobilizing the body's own defenses. "The hope … between vaccines and immunotherapy as well is that they harness the immune system, which is really the most powerful drug we have," she said. "It can fight anything as long as it's equipped to do so and it recognizes something is foreign, and so it's really that combination that needs to happen for therapy to work."

Cercek has been pioneering immunotherapy approaches in the clinic. In 2024, she and her colleagues published findings from a study of patients with a specific type of rectal cancer (搜索)搜索该疾病 showing that after six months of treatment with an immunotherapy drug, none of the patients had detectable tumors—meaning none required chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery afterward.

She told the panel that her team has expanded this research and that "we're very close" to seeing the same kind of treatment used successfully in other cancer (搜索)搜索该疾病 types, sparing patients more invasive therapies.

Defining a Cure

Asked by Park whether cancer (搜索)搜索该疾病 will ever be cured and what that cure might look like, Cercek was unequivocal. "Absolutely we will," she replied. "Probably it will be with early detection and prevention—I think that is going to be, ultimately, what cures cancer."