Skip to Content

Data Mine: Treating Cancer

New hopes for combating the disease
September 1, 2005

Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the United States, surpassed only by heart disease. But recent technological developments offer the hope of new and better ways to combat the disease.

For many of the most pervasive types of cancer, about half of the drug candidates furthest along in the research pipeline use approaches other than that of traditional cytotoxic drugs, which work by killing cells or preventing their division.

With continuing advances in the development of therapies like monoclonal antibodies and tumor vaccines, biotechnology should account for a growing portion of the cancer drug market, which may reach $80 billion a year by 2009.

As costs soar and reimbursement wanes, though, many patients are unlikely to reap the benefits of some of the most promising of these developments.  

Keep Reading

Most Popular

The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it

Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.

How Rust went from a side project to the world’s most-loved programming language

For decades, coders wrote critical systems in C and C++. Now they turn to Rust.

ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like.

New large language models will transform many jobs. Whether they will lead to widespread prosperity or not is up to us.

Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?

An approach that promised to democratize design may have done the opposite.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.