Given the generally high mortality rates from cancer, just how much is spent on cancer research every year?
It is somewhat difficult to give exact figures, but some rough estimates are possible. It is known that the US Federal Government spends over $1 billion per annum on funding research for breast cancer alone. The Federal Government is the single largest spender on this category of research.
There are estimates that the total annual spend on cancer research is between $6 and 7 billion per annum, conservatively. That is in the United States alone. There appear to be no reliable estimates available for worldwide cancer research funding figures – although many other countries, private foundations and corporations fund cancer research, figures are not readily available in many cases.
As far as cancer incidence goes, it is estimated that approximately 10.8 million people in the US either have or have had cancer as of 2004. That is, in 2004, there were 10.8 million people alive in America who have either a past or present history of some kind of cancer.
And in 2008. an estimated 1.44 million new cancer cases were expected to be diagnosed in the United States.
Speaking of how much is spent on cancer research, just what is the money spent on? Cancer research involves a wide variety of activities. One example is molecular bioscience, also called bench research. Epidemiology and clinical trials are two other types of research activities. Clinical trials are conducted to measure the effectiveness or otherwise of various types of cancer treatments under development.
Chemotherapy, surgery, hormone therapy, radiation treatment, etc are various types of applications tested out in clinical trials for cancer research.
In recent years, biotechnology research has produced applications in gene therapy and immunotherapy, which are also evaluated through clinical trials.
Considerable research efforts are focused on what is called oncogenomics, which seeks to identify genes that cause cancer as well as those that inhibit cancerous growths. New types of therapies result from this type of research. Such efforts can also help predict the probable outcome of specific kinds of cancers.
Despite how much is spent on cancer research, the incidence and death rates from cancer continue to remain high. Research efforts may well need to be stepped up to a new level to contain the fatalities from this group of killer diseases.