The world cancer patient population (WCPP): An updated standard for international comparisons of population-based survival

•We propose an update of a global standard for cancer survival comparisons entitled the World Cancer Patient Population (WCPP), constructed from the current global age distributions of cancer patients.•From an analysis of the 36 major cancer types, three standards of age-specific weights are derived to enable age-adjusted comparisons of cancer-specific survival.•Around two-thirds of cancer sites were described by one standard, representing the majority of epithelial cancers more often diagnosed at older age groups.•The two other standards represent a number of non-epithelial cancers that are more common among younger and older age groups, respectively. This study addresses the need for a global cancer patient-based standard population that adjusts for the expected age structure of different cancers, thus aiding the comparison of survival estimates worldwide. Counts of age-specific incidence for 36 cancer sites in 185 countries for the year 2018 were extracted from IARC’s GLOBOCAN database of national estimates. We used a multinomial mixture regression to identify clusters of cancer sites with similar age-specific profiles. An updated standard entitled the World Cancer Patient Population (WCPP) is presented, derived from the current estimated global numbers of cancer patients that comprises three sets of age-specific weights. Around two-thirds of cancer sites were described by a unique standard, representing the majority of epithelial cancers more often diagnosed at older age groups. The two other standards represent a number of non-epithelial cancer types, and cancers common at younger and older age groups, respectively. The WCPP proposed here provides a contemporary and global means to estimate age-standardised survival for international benchmarking purposes.