THE FACT OF THE MATTER
BY PAUL HOPKINS
I was nine and my mother was crying in our small kitchen, my dad trying to console her. “What’s up?” I asked. “Auntie Madge has died,” my father said and my mother cried further. “Why?” I asked innocently. My father placed his finger on his pursed lips and whispered: “Shhh… The Big C.”
Young though I was, I knew what the Big C meant. Kind of. I had heard about it before. In those days we didn’t talk about someone having then-incurable cancer, like we didn’t talk about mental health, suicide or sexual preferences. It was taboo. And, besides, we just didn’t have real knowledge of such matters.
Nowadays, thankfully, we talk openly about such things — about someone in “remission” or “living with cancer” because, 60 years on, medical science has come a long way in dealing with what were once terminal illnesses.
That said, despite trillions spent on research, cancer still kills around 10 million people a year and remains a leading cause of death globally, according to the WHO. Cancer research, however, continues at an unprecedented pace, with new treatments offering hope to millions.
Healthcare will change at an accelerated rate in the next 10 years and beyond — a tomorrow in which medical care is increasingly personalised, digitally focused and data-driven.
Although these advances are already having an impact on healthcare, they are still at their early stages; but, due to advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), the decreasing cost of gene sequencing and personalised medicine, they are fast becoming key parts of diagnostics, drug development and patient care.
Cancer treatment is moving from a one-size-fits-all model towards increasingly biomarker-driven, immune-based targeted therapy. The most consequential 2026 breakthrough is Daraxonrasib, an oral inhibitor that has nearly doubled survival in previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer.
Other major advances include personalised mRNA cancer vaccines, next-generation antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), specific antibodies and AI-driven diagnostics. Key breakthroughs in the last year are treatments for certain breast cancers and other rogue tumours. The Pope’s treatment is a case in point.
Up to 11 reported trials this year across lung, gynaecological and colorectal cancers have shown positive outcomes, according to The Lancet. A vaccine known as mRNA4157/V940 plus Pembrolizumab reduced recurrence risk in high-risk melanoma by some 44 per cent, while another personalised vaccine for pancreatic cancer showed long-lasting immunity, with trials showing 87.5 per cent of responders alive after six years.
I have a cancer that has the potential — and I use the word carefully — to develop into more lethal leukaemia. Almost four years ago, while about to undergo minor spinal surgery, I was told I had Myelodysplastic Syndrome after a biopsy from my bone marrow was confirmed as deficient by a clinic in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) is a group of disorders caused by blood cells that are poorly formed or don’t work properly. MDS results from something amiss in the spongy material inside your bones where blood cells are made. And healthy red blood cells are important, as we know, in keeping one alive.
Management of MDS is most often intended to slow the disease and ease symptoms like poor mobility, balance, worsening vision, dizziness and shortness of breath. Common measures include transfusions to boost blood cells. I had five in one week, after my haemoglobin dropped dramatically — haemoglobin being the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to the body’s tissues. In certain situations, a bone marrow transplant may be recommended.
My MDS is genetic. I inherited it from my mother. Six years after her diagnosis — and monthly trips to the hospital for three-hour blood transfusions — she died of leukaemia in the Millennium year. She was 82.
Medical science has come a long way since that Millennium year.
“It just needs ongoing monitoring and a monthly jab for now,” says my haematologist, a Belfast man. “Old age will likely get you before it does.”
Sitting in the sterile consulting room, I say: “My mother had MDS. It eventually developed into leukaemia, of which she died 22 years ago.”
The consultant smiles. “That was back then. Nowadays, we have a vaccine to treat MDS, a derivative of a drug which enhances an athlete’s performance. We’ll have you running a marathon yet!”
Each month I inject into my thigh my Aranesp 300mg. (One shot costs the HSE €1,067.) The drug is a man-made form of a protein that stimulates red blood cell production.
Aranesp is my miracle drug. I live in hope…
