Some of the most deadly forms of cancers aren’t getting as much attention as others

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – It seems logical that the most difficult cancers to fight might get the most research. But some new research finds that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Some of the most deadly cancers include colorectal, lung, and pancreatic. But they’re not getting the same amount of attention as other types, like breast and prostate, according to a team out of Queen’s University.

Study co-author Dr. Jim Biagi focused on 10 cancers in Canada and the US in 2013.

While pancreatic cancer, for example, was behind 10 per cent of cancer deaths, the percentage of journal articles pulished and clinical trials done on that type were nearly half that.

“We wonder whether we do a cancer like that justice in terms of research input,” he tells us.

More than 40 per cent of deaths from the 10 types were caused by lung cancer, but just 15 per cent of journal articles and 16 per cent of clinical trials were focused on that type of the disease.

Compare that with breast cancer, which was responsible for 10 per cent of deaths, but was the focus of around 30 per cent of both articles and clinical trials.

“What I see happening over the years is breast cancer has a good survival rate and then patients who’ve had breast cancer do have a risk for many years of a recurrence — that leads to a survivorship phenomenon, which is very helpful because then there are breast cancer survivor groups and breast cancer support. And then this also leads to breast cancer awareness, as well as breast cancer funding opportunities like the pink ribbon runs and things like that, which is super.

“Other diseases that are more fatal — like lung cancer or pancreatic cancer — lead to a death rate where we don’t have survivors who can advocate for the new patients coming in with those diagnoses. And prostate has kind of fallen in between those two extremes where, thankfully, men’s health is taking more and more of an active role in media and public perception. Prostate cancer does have a good outlook, and there’s a good opportunity for advocacy for both those who suffer from [prostate] cancer and those who survive it — and prostate cancer has a long-term survivorship as well, so there’s a pool of patients who’ve been through this who can help other men who are developing it.

“So, prostate is, as our study shows, somewhat just behind breast cancer as a place where there’s opportunity for funding,” adds Biagi.

The researchers note in Canada and the US, 443,438 cancer deaths in 2013 were caused by the 10 types they focused on.