The United States has reached a turning point in the fight against cancer: Seven in 10 people now survive five years or more after diagnosis, according to the latest annual report from the American Cancer Society.
This is a big improvement since the 1970s, when only half of those diagnosed lived at least five years. In the mid-1990s, this rate was 63%.
The 70% figure is based on diagnoses from 2015 to 2021. The findings were published Tuesday in the American Cancer Society’s medical journal, CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
Five years is the most common benchmark for measuring cancer survival, because the risk of certain cancers coming back decreases significantly if the cancers have not returned within this time frame.
Thanks to improved treatment options Over the past decade, many cancers have moved from death sentences to chronic diseases, according to the report’s lead author, Rebecca Siegel, senior scientific director of surveillance research at the American Cancer Society.
“It takes decades of research to understand and develop these more effective treatments, and we are now seeing the fruits of those investments,” Siegel said.
The report estimates that 4.8 million cancer deaths were avoided between 1991 and 2023, largely due to better treatments, earlier detection methods and reduced smoking.
Siegel said scientists understand better how cancer grows and spreadsallowing them to modify the immune system to stop or slow the growth of cancer.
She highlighted that immunotherapies are one of the most important advances: treatments help the immune system detect and attack cancer cells. Immunotherapy has been a “game changer” for myeloma, Siegel said. The five-year survival rate for this blood cancer, which is twice as common among blacks as whites in the United States, has increased from 32% in the mid-1990s to 62%.
Targeted therapy, which targets specific genes or proteins that contribute to the growth of cancer cells, has been another major breakthroughbecause these treatments cause less damage to healthy cells and cause fewer side effects.
“Staying on treatment longer allows patients to live longer, and these less toxic treatments allow for more therapeutic sequences,” said Dr. Christopher Flowers, chief of cancer medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who was not involved in the report.
Flowers said targeted therapies and immunotherapies have improved survival outcomes for lung cancer, which kills more people than any other cancer in the United States. The five-year survival rate for regional lung cancer – which is found in the lung and nearby structures or lymph nodes – is now 37%, up from 20% in the mid-1990s.
However, further progress could be made by tackling major cancer risk factorssaid Dr. Clark Gamblin, a gastrointestinal surgeon at the Huntsman Cancer Institute and chief of surgical oncology at the University of Utah.
“Our country is experiencing an obesity epidemic, and cancers are stemming from it,” said Gamblin, who was not involved in the report. “So we are not winning on all fronts.”
Colorectal cancer rates are increasing among people under 50and overall breast cancer rates are increasing among women. Obesity may be a risk factor for both cancers.
Overall, the American Cancer Society estimates there will be more than 626,000 cancer deaths and more than 2.1 million newly diagnosed cases in the United States this year.
Siegel expressed concern about scientists’ ability to study new methods of prevention, detection and treatment, given recent cuts to cancer research by the Trump administration. A analysis of the democrats The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee found a 31% drop in cancer research grant funding during the first three months of 2025, compared to the same period in 2024.
“Other threats to progress are the huge gap we see in the burden of cancer among people of color, particularly Native Americans and Black people,” Siegel said.
These same populations are among the most affected by the expiration of Affordable Care Act insurance subsidieswhich could reduce access to cancer drugs, Siegel said.
Disruptions to cancer screening during the Covid pandemic could also have other effects, including late-stage diagnoses.
“The screening of [asymptomatic] the cancer largely stopped during that time, and I don’t know if we’ve seen the end of it yet,” Gamblin said.
Aria Bendix is the health reporter for NBC News Digital.
