Scientific cancer prevention begins with medication. As we approach the 32nd National Cancer Prevention and Control Week, we not only need to popularize the health concept of "early prevention, early screening, and early treatment," but also pay attention to how innovative drugs can buy more time for life.

In recent years, China has made remarkable breakthroughs in the research and development of new anti-cancer drugs— from bispecific antibodies to ADC drugs, from targeted therapy to immune combination regimens, a series of "Chinese solutions" are profoundly changing the diagnosis and treatment landscape of high-incidence cancers.

01
The serious challenges of high-incidence cancers

Cancer has become the leading chronic disease threatening the health of Chinese residents. According to the latest epidemiological data released by the National Cancer Center, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, thyroid cancer, liver cancer, and stomach cancer rank among the top five in incidence rates in China , while the top five in mortality rates are lung cancer, liver cancer, stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, and esophageal cancer . These five highly prevalent cancers firmly occupy the "main force" position in cancer incidence and mortality in China, outlining the grim situation of cancer prevention and control in the country.

In terms of incidence, lung cancer ranks first in China, accounting for over 22% of all malignant tumors, with more than 1 million new cases annually. It is also the leading cause of cancer death, truly earning its title as the "double number one" killer. Following closely behind are colorectal cancer, thyroid cancer, liver cancer, and stomach cancer. Among these, breast cancer has the highest incidence rate among women, with over 400,000 new cases annually, seriously threatening women's physical and mental health. Liver cancer, due to its extremely high malignancy, has become the second leading cause of cancer death after lung cancer—my country accounts for more than half of the global total of liver cancer patients, with hepatitis B virus infection and alcoholic liver disease being the main contributing factors.

These five major types of cancer account for over 60% of all cancer cases and approximately 70% of cancer deaths in China. Even more alarming is that, due to the insidious nature of early symptoms and weak public awareness of screening, a significant proportion of cancer patients in China are diagnosed at middle or late stages. For some highly malignant cancers (such as liver cancer and pancreatic cancer), the proportion at these stages can reach over 70%. At this point, the tumor has already infiltrated locally or metastasized to distant sites, and the effectiveness of traditional treatments is nearing its limit.

For a long time, chemotherapy and single-target targeted therapy have been the main treatments for mid-to-late stage cancers, but their limitations have become increasingly apparent. Chemotherapy drugs lack specificity, severely damaging normal cells while killing tumor cells, leading to serious adverse reactions such as hair loss, bone marrow suppression, and gastrointestinal reactions. Moreover, most patients develop drug resistance in the later stages of treatment. While single-target targeted drugs can precisely act on specific targets, the heterogeneity of tumors limits their applicability to certain populations, and they also face the challenge of drug resistance. Faced with the survival dilemma of mid-to-late stage patients, there is an urgent need for new anticancer drugs to break the treatment deadlock, and China's path to breakthrough in new drug development begins with addressing this pain point.

02
Technological Breakthrough for Chinese Innovative Drugs

In recent years, China's biopharmaceutical industry has experienced explosive growth, gradually reducing its reliance on foreign technologies in the research and development of new anti-cancer drugs and forming an innovation path with Chinese characteristics. Among these, antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), bispecific antibodies, and immunotherapy have shown the most remarkable performance. With their advantages of high precision, significant efficacy, and controllable adverse reactions, they have achieved a breakthrough from "no drugs available" to "drugs available" and then to "access to high-quality drugs."

Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) achieve precise killing of tumor cells by linking monoclonal antibodies with cytotoxic drugs, effectively addressing the pain point of traditional chemotherapy, which is characterized by "killing a thousand enemies while losing eight hundred of your own." Among domestically produced ADCs, trastuzumab (TROP2 ADC) and brevotrastuzumab (HER2 ADC) have shown the most outstanding performance.

Lucansautuzumab is a TROP2 ADC drug independently developed in China. According to the OptiTROP-Lung04 phase III study published in the *New England Journal of Medicine* (NEJM), for patients with EGFR-mutant advanced non-small cell lung cancer who had failed prior EGFR-TKI therapy, lucansautuzumab treatment achieved a median progression-free survival (PFS) of 8.3 months, significantly superior to the 4.3 months of conventional chemotherapy (HR=0.49), reducing the risk of disease progression or death by 51%. The objective response rate (ORR) was 40.0% (compared to 16.7% in the chemotherapy group), and adverse reactions were mainly mild to moderate, with good patient tolerance. Furthermore, this drug has also achieved excellent results in later-line treatment of triple-negative breast cancer, with an ORR of 48.5%, providing a new option for patients with triple-negative breast cancer who lack effective treatment options.

Trastuzumab (botox) is China's first independently developed HER2-targeted anti-inflammatory drug (ADC). On October 17, 2025, it was officially approved by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) for the treatment of unresectable or metastatic HER2-positive adult breast cancer patients who have previously received one or more anti-HER2 therapies. In the second-line treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer, the Phase III KL166-III-06 study showed that, compared to T-DM1, botox had a median progression-free survival (PFS) of 11.1 months vs. 4.4 months (HR=0.39) and an objective response rate (ORR) of 76.9% vs. 53.0%, demonstrating "best-in-class" potential. Its indication in gastric cancer is still under investigation.

Bispecific antibodies achieve precise dual regulation of tumor cells by simultaneously binding to two different targets, which can enhance the targeted killing effect and reduce the risk of drug resistance.

Evoximab (a PD-1/VEGF bispecific antibody) is a novel PD-1/VEGF bispecific antibody independently developed in China and developed globally. The Phase III HARMONi-6 study showed that evoximab combined with chemotherapy as first-line treatment for advanced squamous non-small cell lung cancer achieved a median progression-free survival (PFS) of 11.1 months, significantly superior to the 6.9 months in the tislelizumab combined with chemotherapy group (HR=0.60), reducing the risk of disease progression or death by 40%. The objective response rate (ORR) reached 62.1%, with a lower incidence of serious adverse reactions, providing a safer and more effective first-line treatment option for patients with squamous cell lung cancer.

Anitumumab (KN026, a HER2 bispecific antibody) focuses on second-line treatment of HER2-positive gastric cancer. In September 2025, its new drug application was accepted by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) and granted priority review status, potentially making it the first HER2 bispecific antibody drug approved in China for this indication. Phase II clinical trials showed that the product, in combination with chemotherapy, achieved an objective response rate (ORR) of 40.0%, a median progression-free survival (PFS) of 8.6 months as assessed by an independent review committee, and a median overall survival of 13.2 months, bringing new hope for survival to patients with HER2-positive gastric cancer who have failed previous treatments.

Combination immunotherapy regimens, through the synergistic effect of "immunotherapy + targeted therapy" or "immunotherapy + chemotherapy," have broken through the limitations of single-treatment approaches, achieving significant breakthroughs, especially in highly malignant cancers such as liver cancer.

The perioperative treatment regimen of camrelizumab combined with apatinib (CARES-009 study) has become a milestone in the treatment of liver cancer. This regimen, targeting patients with surgically resectable hepatocellular carcinoma, achieves the dual goals of "preoperative tumor shrinkage and postoperative recurrence prevention." The phase III clinical trial, published in The Lancet, showed that the median event-free survival (EFS) in the combination therapy group was 42.1 months, significantly superior to the 19.4 months in the surgery-only group (HR=0.59), reducing the risk of disease progression or death by 41%; the major pathological response rate reached 35% (compared to 0% in the surgery-only group), and the 3-year recurrence-free survival rate reached 65.3%. This "Chinese approach" has become an important option for perioperative treatment of liver cancer in China and provides a new paradigm for liver cancer treatment globally.

03
Reflections on the Current Status of Cancer Treatment

The core theme of the 32nd National Cancer Prevention and Control Week is "Early Prevention, Early Screening, and Early Treatment." This theme profoundly reveals the core logic of cancer prevention and control: the development of new anti-cancer drugs breaks through the bottleneck of "treatment," but cannot replace the fundamental roles of "prevention" and "screening. " No matter how good the anti-cancer drug, it is not as effective as preventing cancer from occurring at its source; no matter how precise the treatment, it cannot match the survival advantage brought by early detection. Currently, China has made significant progress in the research and development of new anti-cancer drugs, but in the entire chain of cancer prevention and control, many challenges remain in prevention, screening, and drug accessibility, requiring concerted efforts from the entire society.

At the primary prevention level, behavioral and environmental interventions are the most cost-effective cancer control strategies . The "China Cancer Prevention and Healthy Lifestyle Code" emphasizes smoking cessation, alcohol limitation, weight management, and vaccination, all supported by solid epidemiological evidence. For example, smoking causes over 500,000 lung cancer deaths annually in China, while the risk of lung cancer can be reduced by 30%–50% after 10 years of quitting smoking. Regarding alcohol limitation, a relatively safe threshold is no more than 25 grams of pure alcohol per day for men and no more than 15 grams for women. The dose-response relationship between excessive alcohol consumption and liver, esophageal, and colorectal cancers has been repeatedly validated by cohort studies. Maintaining a body mass index (BMI) between 18.5 and 23.9 can significantly reduce the risk of obesity-related cancers such as postmenopausal breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and endometrial cancer. In addition, the widespread use of hepatitis B and HPV vaccines is reducing the incidence of viral infection-related cancers such as liver cancer and cervical cancer at the source. The full vaccination rate of hepatitis B vaccine for newborns in my country has exceeded 95%, and the hepatitis B surface antigen carrier rate among children under 5 years old has dropped to below 0.3%.

The core of secondary prevention lies in early detection. One of the main reasons for the gap between cancer survival rates in China and those in developed countries is the low rate of early diagnosis. Taking gastric and colorectal cancer as examples, the 5-year survival rate for early-stage patients can reach over 90%, while it drops sharply to 20%–30% for patients in the middle and late stages. However, due to insufficient public awareness of screening indications and low willingness to actively screen during the asymptomatic stage, a significant proportion of patients miss the optimal treatment window by the time they are diagnosed. Low-dose spiral CT scans for high-risk groups of lung cancer, gastroscopy and colonoscopy for high-risk groups of digestive tract cancers, and breast ultrasound combined with mammography for high-risk groups of breast cancer have all been proven to effectively reduce the mortality rate of their respective cancers. Therefore, shifting screening from an "opportunistic" approach to a "population-based" approach is a crucial aspect that urgently needs strengthening in the current cancer prevention and control system.

Even with continuous breakthroughs in drug development, the accessibility of innovative drugs remains a real bottleneck restricting the effectiveness of early treatment. While domestically produced anticancer drugs such as quercetin and evokinemab have been approved for marketing, some are not yet included in the national medical insurance catalog due to R&D costs and pricing strategies, resulting in a heavy out-of-pocket burden for patients. At the same time, there is a significant gap between the drug availability in primary healthcare institutions and that in tertiary hospitals, often requiring patients in counties and rural areas to travel across regions for medication, impacting treatment accessibility and continuity. From a health economics perspective, accelerating the inclusion of innovative drugs in medical insurance and promoting their rational allocation at the primary level can not only directly extend patients' survival but also achieve better utilization of medical resources by reducing the high costs of late-stage treatment.

04
Conclusion

The 32nd National Cancer Prevention and Control Week is not only a profound review of the current state of cancer prevention and control in my country, but also a concentrated inspection of the achievements in China's new drug development efforts. From the warning of the top five most common cancers dominating the list, to the breakthroughs in three major technologies—ADC, dual anti-cancer agents, and combined immunotherapy—and then to the concerted efforts across the entire chain of prevention, screening, and accessibility, China's path to fighting cancer is gradually moving towards precision, efficiency, and universal accessibility.

As a widely circulated consensus in the field of cancer prevention and treatment states: "The best anti-cancer drug is to prevent cancer in the first place; the next best is early detection; and only then is access to good drugs." In the future, with the continuous breakthroughs in new drug research and development in China and the continuous improvement of cancer prevention and control awareness throughout society, we will surely gradually break the shackles of cancer, safeguard the lives and health of hundreds of millions of people with the power of innovation, and win this long and arduous battle against cancer.

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