If the war on cancer is ever decisively and finally won, chances are good the world will look back and see that the first major turning point was the eradication of breast cancer. And this initial victory will be remembered as a smart place to have started.

For, circa 2016-17, the fight against breast cancer has the best-secured screening beachhead to build on.

It’s the struggle with the most ready, willing and able spies behind enemy lines. (I’m thinking not only of researchers and study subjects but also cancer survivors.)

And it’s one of the clashes for which technology has already rewritten the rules of engagement. Think about how fast imaging-based diagnostics have sharpened their aim—how quickly, in retrospect, the field advanced from analog film to digital 2D to digital 3D.

Also think about this: Lost in 2016’s misplaced angst over machine learning is that, by tapping computer-aided detection (CAD), mammography has been amassing experience with the technology for years.

AI is coming to all of radiology. It will build on what’s been learned from CAD in mammography. It will put an ever-sharper second set of eyes on diagnostic images, assisting rather than displacing radiologists. It will help cancer doctors heal cancer patients. 

There’s still a lot of ground to take in the battle over breast cancer, of course.

By the time the ball drops in Times Square, almost a quarter-million new cases of invasive breast cancer will have been diagnosed over the prior 12 months. The disease will have taken the lives of more than 40,000 women.

But if the end of the war on cancer isn’t really in sight just yet, it surely isn’t beyond the realm of the targetable, either. Which leads me to one more observation.

Earlier this month The New England Journal of Medicine published a paper describing the incredible case of a woman who came back from the brink of advanced cancer. Before it started backing off, she had no fewer than seven tumors. Good T-cells, a novel form of immunotherapy and the woman’s take-charge attitude made the difference.

Researchers aren’t sure how replicable this success story will be, if at all.

It doesn’t matter either way. For every battle won is one advance deeper into cancer’s territory. It’s one day closer to the day cancer hoists its final white flag.

When that day comes, the victory over breast cancer will be remembered like Waterloo, Hastings and Saratoga all rolled into one.