# Estimated Projection of US Cancer Incidence and Death to 2040

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-rahib-projection-us-cancer-2040-jama-netw-open-2021/  
OnCo record `paper-rahib-projection-us-cancer-2040-jama-netw-open-2021` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

The 2021 update of the projection that pancreatic cancer will become the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States, now dated to 2040 with about 46,000 deaths a year, as deaths from breast, prostate and bowel cancer fall.

## Summary

Rahib, Wehner, Matrisian and Nead combined SEER delay-adjusted incidence rates, US Census population projections (2016) and average annual percentage changes in incidence and death rates to estimate cancer incidence and deaths to 2040. They estimated that breast (364,000 cases), melanoma (219,000), lung (208,000) and colorectal (147,000) would be the commonest cancers, with prostate falling to fourteenth (66,000). Lung cancer (63,000 deaths) would remain the leading cause of cancer death, with pancreatic cancer (46,000) and liver and intrahepatic bile duct cancer (41,000) surpassing colorectal cancer (34,000) to become second and third; breast cancer (30,000) would fall to fifth.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-24
- Tags: pancreatic-evidence
- Journal: JAMA Network Open
- Year: 2021
- DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.4708
- Authors: Rahib L, Wehner MR, Matrisian LM, Nead KT.
- Findings: Pancreatic cancer projected to cause about 46,000 US deaths in 2040, second only to lung cancer (63,000).; Liver cancer third (41,000); colorectal falls to fourth (34,000) and breast to fifth (30,000).
- What it means: Pancreatic cancer's share of cancer deaths rises because it is standing still while others improve; the 2014 projection to 2030 already made it the second cause of cancer death in the UK's peer countries, and this is the funding argument charities on both sides of the Atlantic use.
- Caveats: Projections extrapolate current trends; a treatment as large as the 2026 RAS inhibitor result would bend them.; US data; UK deaths are around 10,000 a year (Cancer Research UK).

## Sources

- JAMA Netw Open 2021: https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.4708
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33825840/

## Connected records

- key papers: [Rahib 2014: projecting US cancer incidence and deaths to 2030](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-rahib-projecting-cancer-deaths-2030-cancerres-2014/)
- collections: [Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN)](https://onco.cc/collections/pancan/)
- cancers: [Colorectal cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/colorectal/), [Hepatocellular carcinoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/hcc/), [Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/pancreatic/)
- bottlenecks: [Funding follows fashion, not burden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/)
- journals: [JAMA](https://onco.cc/journals/jama/)
- roadmaps: [Pancreatic cancer roadmap: from Whipple's operation to gemcitabine, FOLFIRINOX, adjuvant chemotherapy, PARP inhibition, KRAS inhibition, vaccines and the surveillance question](https://onco.cc/roadmaps/pancreatic-roadmap/)

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