We, the G7 Ministers of Health, have endorsed the following Roadmap to strengthen our collective efforts in the fight against cancer.
Noting the significant multilateral efforts made over the past decade to strengthen the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases and the promotion of mental health and well-being, including within the framework of the United Nations General Assembly, we intend to work to accelerate the implementation of a priority set of evidence-based, cost-effective and affordable actions on cancer, in accordance with national legislation, priorities, capacities and available resources.
Cancer kills nearly 10 million people each year worldwide and new cases are projected to increase by 80 per cent globally by 2050, given the aging of the population and its interactions with environmental and behavioural risk factors, placing an ever-greater burden on societies, health systems, and economies. Important progress has been made over recent decades through national strategies and regional or international initiatives. In this regard, we welcome that such advances have brought the elimination of cervical cancer within reach and we will accelerate our efforts to that end. Yet, important challenges remain, and progress is still uneven, including in the prevention and treatment of cancers affecting women, where disparities in access to early detection, prevention, and outcomes persist. In addition, to prevent and manage infections associated with many cancer therapies, access to safe and effective antimicrobials, including antibiotics, remain essential.
In several key areas, stronger international collaboration is needed to reinforce and complement ongoing efforts. The G7 Members therefore have an important role to play in sustaining political attention, fostering cooperation and concrete actions in dedicated areas, in close collaboration with regions and countries most affected.
We recognize that access to quality cancer care for all remains a pressing challenge. We intend to work towards:
• Supporting country-led efforts to strengthen resilient and self-reliant health systems capable of delivering high-quality cancer care for all.
• Encouraging the development of comprehensive cancer centres, as anchors of research excellence, care quality and education internationally.
• Promoting the secure, responsible and trustworthy use of evidence-based digital technologies, artificial intelligence and quantum research to improve early detection, support clinical decision-making, strengthen palliative care and expand the reach of evidence-based care for all, while preserving patients’ privacy.
Major existing tools and platforms act as a catalyst for collaboration to accelerate the global fight against cancer, including informal networks such as the “Coordination group of leading cancer organizations” comprised of national cancer institutes and leading research organizations from some of the most advanced nations on a voluntary basis. They intend to help align ongoing international, regional, and national initiatives, maximize their collective impact and build on existing programmes and infrastructures to facilitate the implementation of the present roadmap, while respecting the national priorities and resources of each G7 Member.
Pillar 1: Accelerating international data access for paediatric, adolescent and young adult cancers.
Cancers affecting children, adolescents, and young adults have several distinctive features that require particularly strong international collaboration:
• These cancers are often rare, extremely different from cancers in adults, and highly diverse. They comprise many distinct tumour types, several with only very few cases; hence no country alone can generate sufficiently robust evidence across the full range of paediatric, adolescent and young adult cancers for improved understanding or accelerate novel treatments. Enhancing the cross-border use (or reuse) of data is therefore essential to achieve medical advances.
• Since the majority (>80%) of children with cancer may live for decades after treatment, accelerating international data access is also essential to better understand long-term outcomes, including late effects, relapse, fertility, neurocognitive impacts and quality of life.
• Rising trends in certain early-onset cancers amongst adolescent and young adults, together with the need for age-appropriate responses, increase the urgency for better international data access, to help detect trends earlier, improve comparability and support more targeted action.
• However, progress depends on the integration of large-scale, multi-dimensional data (clinical, genomic, imaging), which requires interoperable systems and coordinated international approaches.
We intend to work towards:
• Promoting collaboration between existing data resources and programmes, where appropriate, to bridge national registries, advance interoperability standards and enable responsible cross-border data collaboration, in accordance with applicable legal and regulatory frameworks while respecting national competences.
• Supporting large-scale, multi-dimensional data integration, including clinical, genomic and imaging data, which enables safe and secure data use without the necessity for direct data transfer, drawing on artificial intelligence, where appropriate and according to legal and regulatory frameworks.
• Building on existing international, regional and national initiatives to avoid duplication, close gaps and strengthen international research collaboration for paediatric, adolescent and young adult cancers.
This pillar is expected to be implemented in line with the following modalities:
• Build on existing international, regional and national initiatives related to paediatric and adolescents and young adults with cancer by focusing on their synergies, identifying gaps and promoting interoperability between systems.
• Strengthen collaboration and promote the work initiated by national, regional, and international research consortia on paediatric cancers, to create larger, connected research cohorts and to promote new treatment approaches.
• Build on existing initiatives to explore the use of secure and legally compliant platforms, enabling safe and responsible cross-border data use, where appropriate, in accordance with applicable international, regional and national data protection laws, ethical safeguards, priorities, capacities and available resources.
Pillar 2: Intensifying our fight against cancers with poor prognosis.
Cancers with a poor prognosis represent one of the main challenges to public health and require more international collaboration:
• Despite major advances in prevention, diagnosis and treatment overall, several cancers remain associated with very low survival and disproportionately high mortality rates. For these cancers, less than 25% patients are still disease-free within the first year of treatment, while five-year survival remains below 30%. In most cases improvements have been extremely limited in contrast to those achieved in other tumour types.
• For some of these high fatality cancers, incidence is even seriously increasing, notably for pancreatic or lung cancer. Lung cancer alone accounts for 12% of all cancers worldwide and 18% of cancer deaths, and amongst women, its incidence is rising by approximately 5% per year.
• Progress would be enabled by better alignment of research efforts, improved collaboration of clinical trials, and enhanced access to innovation across countries. Addressing these challenges requires larger-scale collaboration, better alignment of research priorities, and faster translation of scientific advances into clinical practice. Importantly, proper implementation requires the availability of guidelines synthesizing latest evidence together with quality assurance measures for healthcare settings.
We intend to work towards:
• Supporting research on cancers with poor prognosis and the work towards establishing a shared international definition and research agenda for cancers with poor prognosis, recognizing them as a major global challenge.
• Setting ambitious targets for the roll out of screening programmes and for the diagnosis of more cancers at stage 1, as appropriate within national health systems and country contexts, to improve survival rates for cancers with poor prognosis, and in particular to significantly reduce lung cancer mortality in the next ten years.
• Fostering innovative international research programmes, improving cooperation on clinical trials and accelerating the translation of scientific advances - including through digital technologies, artificial intelligence and quantum research - into clinical practice for patients.
This pillar is expected to be implemented in line with the following modalities:
• Focus on complementarity and alignment of priorities and efforts within existing tools.
• Support significant progress in research through existing international, regional and national initiatives, including the Cancer Grand Challenges, calls for proposals from partners, and other targeted calls dedicated to cancers with poor prognosis, subject to available resources.
• Promote collaborative work on molecular and biological characterisation, biomarkers, earlier diagnosis, innovative trial designs and access to novel therapies.
• Encourage the roll-out and international promotion of evidence-based lung cancer screening programmes for eligible populations, alongside prevention and control efforts.
• Build on existing initiatives at international, regional and national levels to promote the uptake of evidence-based approaches and accelerate the translation of existing knowledge into concrete improvements in patient outcomes.
