The World Health Organization has released its Global Status Report on Cancer 2026, and its message is hard to ignore. The report estimates that 20.6 million people were diagnosed with cancer worldwide in 2024, and it projects that number will climb to 35 million new diagnoses every year by 2050. The global cancer burden is not just growing. It is accelerating.
For those of us working to change the outlook for pancreatic cancer, the report carries a specific and urgent lesson. The world cannot treat its way out of rising cancer rates. We have to find cancer earlier.
What the report says about prevention
Much of the WHO’s report focuses on prevention, and for good reason. It estimates that 38 percent of all new cancer cases worldwide in 2022 could be attributed to 30 modifiable risk factors, such as tobacco use, diet, and other exposures that can be reduced.
That tells us prevention has a role to play, but it also tells us a large share of pancreatic cancer cases fall outside the current list of modifiable risk factors, which means prevention alone will never be enough.
Why early detection is the missing piece
Pancreatic cancer is often diagnosed only after it has already advanced, when treatment options are limited and survival is difficult. That is the central challenge PRECEDE exists to solve.
The WHO report reinforces that early detection has two parts: early diagnosis and screening. Early diagnosis applies across all cancer types and depends on symptom awareness, timely clinical assessment, accurate diagnosis, and prompt access to treatment. Screening focuses on finding disease before symptoms ever appear, which is where identifying and following high-risk individuals becomes essential.
For a disease like pancreatic cancer, where survival depends so heavily on catching it early, that combination of risk identification, surveillance, and screening is everything.
How PRECEDE is answering the call
PRECEDE is a global consortium of more than 65 institutions, with more than 12,000 high-risk individuals enrolled, all working together to improve pancreatic cancer early detection through collaborative research, risk identification, and surveillance.
That collaborative model is already producing results. Through PRECEDE, screening has identified many pancreatic cancer cases, with the majority under 2 centimeters, a size associated with dramatically improved survival outcomes. PRECEDE screening has also identified over 155 additional cancers across other types, catching disease that might otherwise have gone unnoticed until much later.
Every one of those cases represents a person who had more options and a better chance because the cancer was found sooner.
A call to accelerate
Dr. Diane Simeone, Director of UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center and Founder and Chief Scientific Advisor of PRECEDE, sees the WHO report as a reason to move faster.
“WHO’s report makes clear that the world cannot treat its way out of the rising cancer burden,” said Dr. Simeone. “For pancreatic cancer, prevention is important, but it is not enough. We need to identify people at elevated risk, follow them carefully and invest in the science and systems that allow us to find cancer earlier, when patients have more options and a better chance at long-term survival.”
That is the work PRECEDE is built to do. Today, the five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer sits at just 13 percent. Our mission is to raise it to 50 percent through early detection and prevention, and the WHO’s projections show exactly why that mission cannot wait.
You can help accelerate early detection research. Support PRECEDE today and join a global effort to give more patients the earlier diagnosis that changes everything.
