Dr Kolb on a Novel Methodology to Measure Progress in Blood Cancers

“I love the life-years-saved [measurement] because it’s what matters to patients and their families. You can translate that into something finite, like birthdays [and] graduations, or just celebrating moments.”

E. Anders Kolb, MD, president and chief executive officer of Blood Cancer United, discussed a novel life-years-saved methodology developed to quantify the impact of therapeutic innovation on survival in blood cancers, and why the approach captures progress that mortality statistics alone can miss.

Progress against cancer in the United States is usually measured by mortality rates, which have declined steadily since 1991, Kolb said, adding that about two-thirds of that decline is attributable to prevention efforts such as reduced smoking, sunscreen use, HPV vaccination, and screening programs including colonoscopy, mammography, and Pap smears, which catch cancers earlier and before they reach harder-to-treat stages. Blood cancers, he noted, have no comparable, historically effective screening program, and prevention is similarly difficult; as a result, progress against these diseases stems primarily from therapeutic innovation and access to those therapies.

To capture that progress, Kolb and colleagues developed a life-years-saved analysis, published in Blood Advances, that compared general population life expectancy against life expectancy after a blood cancer diagnosis. The difference between the two, calculated by age cohort, yields the number of life-years lost or saved, he explained.

Kolb said he favors the metric since it reflects what matters most to patients and their families, translating survival gains into concrete milestones such as birthdays and graduations. The measure also acknowledges that not every patient is cured, he noted: patients with indolent lymphomas or chronic myeloid leukemia may never achieve a cure but can still live a normal life, which he called a legitimate goal of therapy. Kolb added that cure can come at a cost that standard clinical trial follow-up may not reflect; trials often report survival rates exceeding 1 year, he said, but the life-years-saved approach also accounts for life-limiting or life-ending adverse effects that can emerge years after treatment ends.