cancers

Non-small-cell lung cancer is the proving ground for precision medicine: a dozen targetable mutations each with a matched pill, immunotherapy for the rest, and ADCs and bispecifics arriving now. Because most cases are still found late, low-dose CT screening is the other half of the story.

HR-positive breast cancer is the most common breast cancer, driven by oestrogen. It was treated for years with hormone-blocking pills, now joined by CDK4/6 inhibitors, PI3K-pathway drugs, degraders, and ADCs.

The cancer where screening works best and where immunotherapy can make some tumours disappear entirely; chemotherapy still carries most metastatic disease, now with antibodies and targeted combinations chosen by RAS, BRAF, mismatch repair and which side of the bowel the tumour started on.

Almost every pancreatic tumour carries a KRAS mutation, and for the first time drugs against it work: daraxonrasib nearly doubled survival in previously treated disease in 2026. Pancreatic cancer has been the hardest common cancer to treat once advanced; that is what is starting to change.

Prostate cancer is the home of theranostics: PSMA PET finds it, PSMA radioligands treat it. Hormonal therapy remains the foundation, with PARP and AKT inhibitors added by genotype.

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is an aggressive but curable lymphoma. CAR-T cures about 40% of relapsed patients, and off-the-shelf bispecifics are now approved.

A breast cancer that lacks the three receptors (oestrogen, progesterone, HER2) that other breast cancers can be treated through. It was the hardest subtype for decades; since 2020 immunotherapy and ADCs have changed that.

Usually found late. PARP inhibitors transformed maintenance therapy, and ADCs against folate receptor and CDH6 are arriving for platinum-resistant disease.

Lung cancer splits into non-small-cell disease, about 85 percent of it, and small-cell disease, which was 6.6 percent of English cases in 2024 and 9.1 percent of Welsh ones (National Lung Cancer Audit, State of the Nation 2026); the two behave and are treated very differently. Screening, staging and the things both types share are common ground; the rest belongs to each subtype.

A cancer with three new targets in five years: Claudin 18.2, FGFR2b, and HER2 with new ADCs, plus immunotherapy in first line.

Multiple myeloma is a plasma-cell cancer with more new drug classes than any other: proteasome inhibitors, IMiDs, CD38 antibodies, BCMA CAR-T, bispecifics, and an ADC.

Bladder cancer went from 40 years of cisplatin to an ADC-immunotherapy combination that nearly doubled survival, and in 2026 the first blood-test-guided drug approval.

The skin cancer that proved immunotherapy works: half of advanced patients now live 10 years. Also the first with an approved TIL therapy, an oncolytic virus, and a positive phase 3 personalised vaccine.

Acute myeloid leukaemia is an aggressive blood cancer where, after 40 years of the same chemotherapy, a wave of targeted drugs (FLT3, IDH, BCL-2, menin) arrived.

Cancers of the mouth and throat, increasingly caused by HPV. Immunotherapy is first line for advanced disease and now used before surgery.

Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is the childhood cancer success story, and was the first disease treated with CAR-T and with a T-cell engager.

A fast-growing lung cancer. About a third of cases are confined to one side of the chest and are treated to cure with chemotherapy and radiotherapy together; the rest respond to chemotherapy and relapse quickly. After 30 years without progress, durvalumab consolidation, the T-cell engager tarlatamab and antibody-drug conjugates have each lengthened survival since 2024.

HER2-positive breast cancer was once the most aggressive subtype and is now one of the most treatable, thanks to trastuzumab and, more recently, Enhertu.

Sarcomas are dozens of rare cancers of bone and connective tissue. GIST was the first solid tumour cured-in-practice by a targeted pill; synovial sarcoma got the first TCR-T therapy.

A slow leukaemia that no longer needs chemotherapy: BTK inhibitors and venetoclax control it for years, often in fixed-duration courses.

Metastatic cancer means the original cancer has spread to other parts of the body, most often the bones, liver, lungs or brain. It keeps the name of where it started, is treated with therapies that reach the whole body, and can increasingly be controlled for years; with limited spread it is sometimes treated with the aim of cure.

Follicular lymphoma is the most common slow-growing lymphoma, defined in about 85% of cases by a BCL2 translocation. Most people live with it for decades, treated only when it causes problems; it can be controlled repeatedly with anti-CD20 antibodies, chemotherapy, bispecifics or CAR-T but rarely cured, and a small share transform into an aggressive lymphoma each year.

Cholangiocarcinoma is cancer of the bile ducts or gallbladder. It is rare and often found late, but it turned out to carry more targetable mutations than almost any other gastrointestinal cancer, and immunotherapy now adds to chemotherapy from the first treatment.

Hodgkin lymphoma is one of the most curable cancers, where the goal is now to cure with less toxicity, using brentuximab and, from 2026, first-line nivolumab.

Kidney cancer is where anti-angiogenic drugs and immunotherapy came together, and where a Nobel-winning oxygen-sensing pathway yielded a drug, belzutifan.

Metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer is disease that grows despite castrate testosterone. Sequenced treatments now include androgen receptor inhibitors, docetaxel and cabazitaxel, PARP inhibitors for men with BRCA-type mutations, the radioligand 177Lu-PSMA-617 and radium-223 for bone-predominant disease.

Metastatic pancreatic cancer has spread beyond the pancreas, usually to the liver, and is treated with chemotherapy rather than surgery. Three combination regimens lengthen life, a minority of patients qualify for targeted drugs chosen by tumour or inherited mutations, and in 2026 the pan-RAS inhibitor daraxonrasib became the first drug against the KRAS mutation that drives almost every case.

Oesophageal cancer is really two diseases sharing one organ: squamous cell carcinoma, which dominates in Asia, and adenocarcinoma, which dominates in the West and is treated like gastric cancer. Immunotherapy is now standard, and the bispecific ADC iza-bren posted a positive phase 3 in the squamous type in 2026.

A cancer that could be eliminated by HPV vaccination and screening. For those who develop it, immunotherapy and a tissue-factor ADC have improved survival.

The gynaecological cancer where immunotherapy has had the biggest impact, guided by molecular classification.

Liver cancer almost always grows in a liver already damaged by hepatitis, alcohol or fatty liver disease. It is one of the most preventable cancers, and since 2020 immunotherapy combinations have roughly doubled how long people with advanced disease live.

Peripheral T-cell lymphomas are lymphomas of T cells rather than B cells. They are rarer, more varied and, apart from a few subtypes, harder to treat than B-cell lymphomas; several new drugs help only defined subtypes.

Gallbladder cancer starts in the small bile-storing sac under the liver and is one of the biliary tract cancers. Most cases are found late, or by chance when a gallbladder is removed for gallstones. It is rare in the UK, with about 1,300 cases a year, and much commoner in Chile, Bolivia and northern India. Found early, an operation can cure it.

Gliomas are now diagnosed by molecular class, and three classes got their first targeted drugs in 2024-25 (vorasidenib for IDH-mutant glioma, tovorafenib for BRAF-altered paediatric glioma, dordaviprone for H3 K27M). Glioblastoma is the hardest to treat: surgery, radiotherapy with temozolomide and tumour treating fields are its backbone, with CAR-T into the brain and focused ultrasound in trials.

An uncommon B-cell lymphoma driven by cyclin D1 that used to behave badly in almost everyone. BTK inhibitors, CAR-T and now BCL2 drugs have changed it from chemotherapy-plus-transplant to targeted combinations.

The treatment of triple-negative breast cancer that has spread has been transformed since 2020, though it is not yet curable. By PD-L1 score, first treatment is pembrolizumab with chemotherapy or with sacituzumab govitecan, or datopotamab deruxtecan or sacituzumab govitecan alone; BRCA carriers can take a PARP inhibitor tablet; and trastuzumab deruxtecan reaches the third of tumours with low HER2.

A family of usually slow-growing tumours that start in hormone-producing cells of the gut, pancreas and lungs. They pioneered the idea of using the same molecule to see a tumour on a scan and then to treat it with radiation.

Advanced melanoma has spread beyond what surgery can remove, and it is the cancer in which immunotherapy first proved it could cure some people: about half of those given nivolumab with ipilimumab are alive ten years later. If immunotherapy fails, options include a cell therapy grown from the patient's own immune cells, a virus injected into the tumour, and targeted pills for BRAF-mutant disease.

When hormone-positive breast cancer grows through a CDK4/6 inhibitor, a blood test picks the next drug. Tumours with an acquired ESR1 mutation respond to the oral degraders elacestrant, camizestrant and imlunestrant; tumours with PIK3CA, AKT1 or PTEN changes to capivasertib, inavolisib or alpelisib; and once endocrine options run out, antibody-drug conjugates come before chemotherapy.

Bone-marrow disorders where blood cells are made badly and too few reach the blood; a third progress to acute leukaemia. Treatment ranges from transfusions and growth factors to hypomethylating drugs and, for the fit, transplant.

High-risk neuroblastoma has spread widely in a child over 18 months old or carries extra copies of the MYCN gene. Treatment lasts about 18 months and uses every tool: chemotherapy, surgery, high-dose chemotherapy with stem cell rescue, radiotherapy, and the anti-GD2 antibody dinutuximab, which raised survival in ANBL0032; eflornithine, given afterwards, was approved in 2023 to lower relapse.

EGFR-mutated lung cancer is driven by a single faulty growth receptor and is treated first with a pill rather than chemotherapy. Osimertinib keeps the disease under control for about a year and a half on average, adding chemotherapy or the antibody amivantamab extends that further, and three years of osimertinib after surgery roughly halves the risk of death in early-stage disease.

High-risk childhood leukaemia means a child aged ten or over, a very high white cell count, T-cell disease, spread to the brain or testes, or adverse genetics, and it is treated with longer and more intensive chemotherapy. Most children are still cured; the T-cell form gained the drug nelarabine after the AALL0434 trial, and cranial radiotherapy has been dropped for almost everyone.

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is not one disease but a family of more than sixty cancers of the lymphocytes, the white blood cells of the immune system. About 95 per cent come from B cells and the rest from T or NK cells; some grow over years and are watched, others grow over weeks and are treated to cure. The family is the map; the subtype is the disease, and the subtype is what decides the treatment.

KRAS G12C bowel cancer carries a mutation that was undruggable for forty years. The first KRAS drugs work only weakly on their own in the bowel, because the tumour switches EGFR back on, so they are given with an anti-EGFR antibody: sotorasib with panitumumab and adagrasib with cetuximab are both approved after chemotherapy.

Myeloproliferative neoplasms are slow-growing blood cancers in which the marrow overproduces red cells (polycythaemia vera), platelets (essential thrombocythaemia) or scar tissue (myelofibrosis). Almost all carry a mutation in JAK2, CALR or MPL; treatment aims to prevent clots and control symptoms, and only transplant cures myelofibrosis.

Skin cancer covers the very common and rarely dangerous basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas, the less common but more serious melanoma, and rarer tumours such as Merkel cell carcinoma and Kaposi sarcoma. Almost all of it is caused by ultraviolet light and most of it is found and cured by simple surgery.

Thyroid cancer is usually curable with surgery and radioactive iodine, the original theranostic. Rare aggressive forms respond to RET and BRAF inhibitors.

Extrapulmonary neuroendocrine carcinoma is the fast-growing, poorly differentiated form of neuroendocrine cancer arising outside the lung, most often in the bowel, oesophagus, stomach or pancreas. It behaves like small-cell lung cancer and is treated the same way, with platinum and etoposide chemotherapy, and drugs against the DLL3 protein are now in phase 3 trials.

When head and neck cancer comes back where it cannot be removed, or spreads elsewhere, it is treated to extend life rather than cure: pembrolizumab, alone or with chemotherapy, is the first choice, cetuximab-based regimens and cheap oral chemotherapy are alternatives, and antibodies that hit two targets at once are in late-stage trials.

Myeloma almost always returns, and each return is harder to treat. Two kinds of immune therapy aimed at the BCMA protein on myeloma cells, CAR-T cells (KarMMa-3, CARTITUDE-4) and off-the-shelf bispecific antibodies (MajesTEC), now give deep remissions after other drugs fail, and a second target, GPRC5D, gives another option.

Advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer has spread beyond the uterus or come back after treatment. Chemotherapy plus an immune checkpoint antibody is now the first treatment for everyone, with the biggest gains in mismatch-repair-deficient tumours, and lenvatinib with pembrolizumab is the standard when platinum chemotherapy stops working.

Chronic myeloid leukaemia is a blood cancer driven by a single fused gene, BCR-ABL1, and the model for oncogene-targeted treatment: imatinib in 2001 and the tyrosine kinase inhibitors that followed turned it into a condition most people live with long-term. About half of patients with a sustained deep molecular response can now stop treatment altogether.

Osteosarcoma is the most common bone cancer, mostly in teenagers. Chemotherapy plus surgery cures about two-thirds when it has not spread; because no new drug has beaten that chemotherapy in a large trial in 30 years, the next gains are being sought in cellular therapy against GD2, HER2 and B7-H3.

Salivary gland cancers are a family of over 20 rare cancers, each with its own behaviour and often its own gene fusion. Surgery and radiation treat most; drug therapy is now chosen by the specific subtype, from anti-HER2 or anti-androgen drugs to NTRK inhibitors.

Advanced hepatocellular carcinoma has invaded the liver's veins or spread beyond it. Sorafenib was the only drug for a decade; now the combination of the immunotherapy atezolizumab with the anti-angiogenic antibody bevacizumab, or the two-antibody regimen durvalumab with tremelimumab, is standard first line, and several further drugs follow it.

Early triple-negative breast cancer is treated to cure. For tumours over 2 cm or with node involvement, chemotherapy plus the immunotherapy pembrolizumab before and after surgery has raised cure rates; BRCA carriers with cancer left at surgery add a year of olaparib, and others with residual cancer are offered capecitabine. Whether the tumour has vanished by surgery guides what comes next.

Small-cell lung cancer that has spread responds fast to chemotherapy but almost always returns within a year. Adding an immunotherapy antibody to first-line chemotherapy helps a minority live for years, and the T-cell engager tarlatamab, which points immune cells at the DLL3 protein on the cancer, has for the first time lengthened life after relapse.

A cancer at the back of the nose caused largely by the Epstein-Barr virus and common in southern China and Southeast Asia. Radiation cures most early cases; adding chemotherapy and, recently, PD-1 immunotherapy has improved outcomes in advanced disease, and a blood test for viral DNA can detect it early.

Primary myelofibrosis is a blood cancer in which the marrow scars over, the spleen swells and patients become anaemic and exhausted. JAK inhibitors, ruxolitinib first (COMFORT) and then fedratinib, pacritinib and momelotinib (MOMENTUM), shrink the spleen and relieve symptoms; only a donor stem cell transplant can cure it.