That is the finding from a recent paper by myself and co-authors Joanna MacEwan, Syvart Dennen, Rebecca Kee, Farzad Ali, and Katharine Batt. An excerpt from the paper is below:
Between 2000 and 2016, deaths per 100,000 population across the 15 most common tumor types declined by 24%. Additionally, 10.2 new indications were approved per year across the 15 most common tumor types. Cancer drug approvals were associated with statistically significant deaths averted in 2016 for colorectal cancer (4,991, p = 0.004), lung cancer (33,825, p < 0.001), breast cancer (11,502, p < 0.001), non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (6,636, p < 0.001), leukemia (4,011, p < 0.001), melanoma (1,714, p < 0.001), gastric cancer (758, p = 0.019), and renal cancer (739, p < 0.001). Between 2000 and 2016, new cancer treatments were correlated with 1,291,769 (p < 0.001) total deaths prevented across the 15 most common tumor types.
Do read the whole article here.