--- title: Every Moment Counts: Delivering Cancer Innovation When It Matters Most description: A cancer diagnosis changes how people measure time. This article explores how advances in oncology research, precision medicine, and Pfizer’s cancer innovation efforts are helping patients live longer, fuller lives with more hope for the future. canonical: https://time.com/branded-content/pfizer/every-moment-counts-delivering-cancer-innovation-when-it-matters-most/ article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-05-29T15:50:29.956Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-29T15:50:23.159Z og:title: Every Moment Counts: Delivering Cancer Innovation When It Matters Most og:description: A cancer diagnosis changes how people measure time. This article explores how advances in oncology research, precision medicine, and Pfizer’s cancer innovation efforts are helping patients live longer, fuller lives with more hope for the future. og:url: https://time.com/branded-content/pfizer/every-moment-counts-delivering-cancer-innovation-when-it-matters-most/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blted3c81f1e822f823/6a0f6eff978b1d840f371f71/Hero_Image.png?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Every Moment Counts: Delivering Cancer Innovation When It Matters Most twitter:description: A cancer diagnosis changes how people measure time. This article explores how advances in oncology research, precision medicine, and Pfizer’s cancer innovation efforts are helping patients live longer, fuller lives with more hope for the future. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blted3c81f1e822f823/6a0f6eff978b1d840f371f71/Hero_Image.png?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Every Moment Counts: Delivering Cancer Innovation When It Matters Most ## Video: Bringing Science to Life [Watch (HLS stream): Bringing Science to Life](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/6DtU5BeE.m3u8) (0:32)  _Published 2026-05-22. Bringing Science to Life_  Passage of time is one of the few things every person measures – each in a unique way. For a student, it’s a landscape of semesters and deadlines. For a professional, a series of projects and fiscal years. For a parent, it’s school years, birthdays, and all the milestones in between. But for millions, their relationship with time is fundamentally transformed in a single, life‑altering moment: a cancer diagnosis. For Amanda Burr, it was a breast cancer diagnosis in her 30s – a stage of life usually defined by possibility and a future still unfolding. “All I felt was utter panic that my ‘time’ was going to run out,” Burr recalls. “With one-year-old twins and a five-year-old daughter, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I might miss, or whether they’d remember me as their mom. In that moment, time no longer felt guaranteed.” For people like Amanda who have lived with cancer, time is not abstract: it is measured in moments they hope for – yet fear they may never reach. A new, sudden urgency shapes every decision, every moment of waiting, and every treatment choice.  With her husband and three children, Amanda Burr celebrates being cancer free ### ### When Time Becomes the Measure of Innovation Cancer treatment today looks very different than it did twenty years ago – reshaped by the steady persistence of the global scientific community, the advocacy efforts of patients and the thousands of breakthroughs both small and large that, year after year, have pushed the field forward. Once viewed as a single disease, cancer is now understood as more than 200 distinct diseases – each shaped by unique biology. As scientific understanding has deepened, treatment has moved beyond a one-size-fits-all approach toward a more precise therapeutic approach designed to target how cancers grow and spread – and, in some cases, to help the body’s own immune system recognize and fight them. This shift is helping many people have longer, fuller lives – and live beyond cancer. But progress has not reached everyone equally – or quickly enough. Many cancers remain difficult to treat, and patients often exhaust their options while promising investigational therapies are still years away. The journey from laboratory discovery to patient care is long and meticulous, often spanning more than a decade. For those waiting, time is measured in small wins, scans, and the hope that the next advance arrives soon enough.  ### ### Bringing Science to Life The gap between discovery in the lab and delivery in the clinic creates a powerful sense of urgency for Pfizer, a pharmaceutical company with one of the largest oncology R&D efforts in the industry. Focused on advancing breakthroughs in some of the most common and life-threatening cancers – including breast, bladder, prostate, lung, and blood cancers – Pfizer is driven by a singular aim: to close the distance between discovery and real breakthrough treatment options for patients. That work builds on a legacy of transforming care in several difficult-to-treat cancers. “For many of us at Pfizer, our commitment to advancing cancer care is deeply personal - we’ve seen and felt its impact firsthand, the toll cancer takes on our families and loved ones,” says Jeff Legos, Chief Oncology Officer, Pfizer. “Cancer isn’t slowing down, so we must speed up. Time is life. For patients, families, and caregivers waiting for breakthroughs, every day matters. That’s why we pair extraordinary science with precision and speed - so innovation translates into meaningful breakthroughs, faster.” Every day saved in the complex process of cancer therapy development matters for the patients waiting. That urgency is built into Pfizer’s R&D engine - bringing disciplines together earlier, reducing friction across development, and using tools like artificial intelligence to help scientists see patterns faster and make better decisions sooner. This approach is woven throughout Pfizer’s work, from accelerating early discovery and clinical development to improving manufacturing and patient care. --- > “Our goal is to deliver eight breakthroughs by 2030 - and we’ve completely reimagined how we work to get there...By rethinking the traditional path of drug development and integrating cutting-edge digital tools at each step, we’re dramatically accelerating the pace of the most promising science - in several cases, reducing the time from target to patient by half.” Jeff Legos**Chief Oncology Officer, Pfizer** --- ### Turning Progress into Time A relentless focus on advancing innovation faster makes a powerful human impact. Last year alone, 2.9 million people in the United States were treated with a Pfizer cancer medicine – the result of a sustained effort that has delivered more than ten FDA approvals across ten different cancer types in just the last three years. Pfizer’s continued momentum is on display at this year’s American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting – the world’s largest and most influential gathering of cancer researchers and clinicians – where the company is presenting new findings from more than 45 abstracts across multiple cancer types. In a challenging form of lung cancer, for example, an approved targeted therapy has now shown unprecedented results for patients after seven years of treatment – helping them live far longer than was once expected, while their cancer remains progression free, gaining time that was rarely possible before. Additional presentations at ASCO point to the future, highlighting a next‑generation pipeline that includes new combinations that attack cancer in different ways at the same time. These approaches aim to help treatments work longer and reduce the chance that cancer adapts or stops responding. Behind every data point are scientists driven not only by innovative discoveries, but by the patients who stand to benefit from it. Amanda Burr, who is not only a breast cancer survivor but also works in Pfizer R&D, knows this intimately. Having experienced firsthand how innovation can change the course of a life‑altering diagnosis, she continues her work with renewed purpose. “Being both a scientist and a patient gives me a dual perspective,” Burr says. “I understand how complex the science can be, and I know personally what it can mean to bring science to life, especially when that science gives someone more time, more moments, and more hope." [](https://pfizer.com/oncology) [LEARN MORE](https://pfizer.com/oncology) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/branded-content/pfizer/every-moment-counts-delivering-cancer-innovation-when-it-matters-most/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/branded-content/pfizer/every-moment-counts-delivering-cancer-innovation-when-it-matters-most/"},"headline":"Every Moment Counts: Delivering Cancer Innovation When It Matters Most","datePublished":"2026-05-29T15:50:29.956Z","dateModified":"2026-05-29T15:50:23.159Z","description":"A cancer diagnosis changes how people measure time. 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