Rare Cancers: Charting a Faster Route to Treatment

Rare cancers present doctors, researchers, and patients with a unique set of challenges. Rare cancers often are diagnosed at later stages. Patients typically have limited treatment options, in part because the small number of diagnoses makes gold-standard clinical trials difficult. The picture is further complicated by increasingly expensive cancer drug costs. Yet, promises of emerging technologies, improved diagnostics, targeted therapies and pharmaceutical options provide hope. Calls for new ways to study rare cancers are being made so that patients can get access to better treatments more quickly. In this Forum, panelists discussed how advances in cancer immunology, innovative trial designs, and international data sharing can create new hope for patients with rare cancers. Supported by The Economist Group, this Forum event was presented on February 1, 2019. Watch the entire series: https://theforum.sph.harvard.edu/