Here is a nice figure on cancer survival changes from 1971 to 2011[1]. The writer is correct that not all of this improvement is down to newer drugs - a lot of it is down to better 'supportive' management - recognising side effects of chemo, keeping on top of transfusions, having cancer centres where all of this can be coordinated, having specialists (oncologists) managing the disease etc etc. For example, the survival of acute myeloid leukaemia has improved dramatically since then, but our treatment has remained the same two old-fashioned drugs.
Also the writer lumps chemo drugs into two categories - cancer chemotherapy, and targeted therapies. That is probably not a good way to look at it as iskander has already mentioned re: immune checkpoint therapy, which is quite different. Other categories include:
* small molecule drugs (not antibodies, target a cell metabolic pathway)
* adoptive cell therapy - grafting antibodies to killer immune cells etc etc...
Progression-free survival isn't as good a metric as overall survival - that is true. It was brought in as a replacement for some other indicators, such as relapse-free survival, which ignored everything (including death due to treatment) except relapse. Progression free survival doesn't let you get away with that. Some diseases have been changed massively by treatment. CML used to have an overall survival of around 5-7 years, it's now so long we can't really measure it since imatinib was brought it. Obviously people do die of the disease, but we don't know what the average life expectancy is because they are doing pretty well. To introduce new treatments in this disease you're going to have to use another metric apart from overall survival.
Also the writer lumps chemo drugs into two categories - cancer chemotherapy, and targeted therapies. That is probably not a good way to look at it as iskander has already mentioned re: immune checkpoint therapy, which is quite different. Other categories include:
* small molecule drugs (not antibodies, target a cell metabolic pathway) * adoptive cell therapy - grafting antibodies to killer immune cells etc etc...
Progression-free survival isn't as good a metric as overall survival - that is true. It was brought in as a replacement for some other indicators, such as relapse-free survival, which ignored everything (including death due to treatment) except relapse. Progression free survival doesn't let you get away with that. Some diseases have been changed massively by treatment. CML used to have an overall survival of around 5-7 years, it's now so long we can't really measure it since imatinib was brought it. Obviously people do die of the disease, but we don't know what the average life expectancy is because they are doing pretty well. To introduce new treatments in this disease you're going to have to use another metric apart from overall survival.
[1] http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/sites/default/files/styles/c...