More than 10 million people are diagnosed with cancer each year, making it the leading cause of death. Every year, cancer kills 6 million people worldwide, accounting for 12% of all fatalities. Since 1990, there have been nearly 16 million new cancer cases diagnosed in the United States, with 553,768 cancer fatalities. In 2002, about 1.3 million new cases of cancer were diagnosed, with over half a million fatalities from cancer, or one in every four deaths. In 1950, the death rate from cancer in the United States was 193.9 per 100,000, and it remained at 194.0 per 100,000 in 2001. It's a multidisciplinary problem that will require more and tighter collaboration between doctors, medical and biological scientists, and biomedical engineers to discover a solution. Emerging nanotechnology raises the possibility of substantial advances in the near future.
