The revolution in the fight against cancer
In 2018, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Japanese scientist Tasuku Honjo and American James P. Allison for their studies on cancer immunotherapy. Their research began in the late 1980s and 1990s, but that basic research has borne fruit, and today immunotherapy is a fundamental therapy in the fight against this disease—or diseases, because there are many types of cancer—which caused nearly 17,000 deaths in Catalonia last year.
The increase in life expectancy of the older generation boomer This means we're seeing more and more cancer patients, as it's a disease partly linked to aging. This will make it difficult to see absolute declines in the number of cases, but the truth is that in the last decade, there has been great progress in the fight against cancer. Not only in terms of mortality but also in the quality of life of patients. Along with other therapies, this is thanks to the introduction of immunotherapy, understood as any treatment that stimulates the immune system by distinguishing tumor cells and attacking them. We believe that in 2015 there were only 73 patients in Catalonia receiving this treatment, and by 2024 there were already 6,387, 17.81% of the total number of patients. The number has grown exponentially in the last decade, and it is expected that this year's figures will be far higher than last year's. In fact, it's been incorporated into the public health portfolio for just under a decade, and there are now 68 treatments available for up to eighteen different types of cancer. This has improved prognoses and, in some cases, made the disease chronic.
Not all types of cancer are suitable for this option, nor does it work for all patients. In many cases, the majority, traditional treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy must still be used, or they must be combined, but research continues and there are increasing advances. The advantage of these new treatments, including epigenetic treatments, is that they do not have as many side effects, although they do have them, and they generally allow patients to lead relatively normal lives while undergoing treatment. However, they are expensive. In recent years, cancer spending in Catalonia has tripled, and one in every five euros of these resources is allocated precisely to immunotherapy.
Resources are finite, and that is why it is also important to dedicate a significant portion of spending to prevention—which avoids diseases and reduces overall public health spending—and also to research, since the improvement and refinement of drugs also makes these treatments cheaper. There is still a long way to go in the field of research to win this war against cancer, in which scientists and specialized medical teams are increasingly winning battles. That is why it is essential to maintain public and private support for scientific research, which is long and sometimes expensive, and we should be pleased that Catalonia has world-renowned centers in this field. As a society, we must encourage them and understand that a discovery made today that we may not fully understand could be key to curing diseases in fifteen or twenty years.
