On 07 Feb, 2026, Seniors Today hosted their weekly Health Live Webinar with Dr Sewanti Limaye who spoke on and answered questions about Cancer Care in Seniors while Cancer Awareness week is being observed this week.
Dr Sewanti Limaye is the Director of Medical & Precision Oncology at Sir H. N. Reliance Foundation Hospital. She completed her M.D. at New York University and her M.S. in Patient‑Oriented Research at Columbia University, with a focus on cancer genomics and biostatistics.
She established one of India’s first precision oncology clinics led by a medical oncologist and has expanded the hospital’s Oncology Clinical and Translational Research Programme. Her prior roles include Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and NewYork‑Presbyterian Hospital, and Attending Physician in Medical Oncology at Dana‑Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She has also worked at the Phase‑I Early Drug Development Center at Harvard Medical School.
Dr Limaye specialises in solid tumours across head and neck, breast, lung, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, and gynaecological cancers. She earned her medical degree with honours from Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Bhagalpur, and completed her internal medicine residency at NYU.
Her research collaborations include teams at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Dana‑Farber, Columbia University, and the U.S. National Cancer Institute. She serves on the Ethics Board of Tata Memorial Hospital and co‑founded Iylon Precision Oncology with Dr. Sendurai Mani of MD Anderson Cancer Center. She also leads the IMPACT India International Initiative to advance cancer care.
Dr.Limaye has led national and international clinical trials, served on Data Safety Monitoring Boards, and contributed to protocol development in precision oncology. She was nominated as National Chair for Sub‑protocol Arm B of the NCI‑MATCH Trial.
She has won the following awards: The John Flynn Young Investigator Award, the Rose and Jack Horowitz Award and the ASCO Medical Oncology Research Excellence Award (2008)
- 1 in 2 men, and 1 in 3 women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. These numbers communicate the message that cancer is a common problem. It is being described as an epidemic because of the rising number of cases and the prevalence.
- Cancer is a civilisational challenge and the global cancer burden continues to rise.
- Early detection is the only answer to controlling cancer.
- When breast cancer gets detected at a later stage, the survival rate at 5 years is only 31%. However, on detection at an early stage, 100% survival rate at 5 years is seen.
- Similarly, in case of colorectal, ovaries, kidney, lung, liver, prostate, breast- early detection leads to much higher survival and better quality of life.
- 70- 80% cancer care is happening out of pocket and only 20- 30% is covered by insurance or is funded.
- There are only 456 clinical trials serving cancer patients in the year 2023 in India when most novel drugs in cancer care are available in our country.
- Precision medicine and personalised therapy are interchangeable used to describe the right treatment for the right patient at the right cost, every time.
- Precision medicine in oncology means to correctly and accurately identify biomarkers and then construct strategies for therapy that are very personalised and focused on how that patient is responding, his tumour is responding/ behaving.
- Vision for precision medicine is through genomic analysis, transcription analysis, other biomarker biopsy discoveries, liquid biopsy- through which we can investigate multiple markers in a patient’s blood and tissue.
- Early detection of cancer can save lives.
- We have standard, routine screening programmes for early detection and screening and Dr Sewanti Limaye recommends that everyone should get these screening tests done at least once a year. This will not only help with early detection but also with risk stratification.
- Let’s make screening revolutionary, and the norm because early detection toon can truly change the survival rate and final outcome.
- Standardised screening tests, protocols and investigation are available for- oral cancer, breast cancer, thyroid cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, cervical cancer, prostate cancer- are available.
- There are many cancers that don’t have a standardised screening which is where early detection with liquid biopsy plays a role. It helps in detecting 70 types of different cancers.
