National Yang-Ming University and Taipei Veterans General Hospital yesterday announced that the National Cancer Institute, the US government’s lead agency for cancer research, has established a laboratory in Taiwan and is to begin a five-year collaborative research project focusing on lung cancer.
National Yang-Ming University vice president and Cancer Progression Research Center director Yang Muh-hwa (楊慕華) said lung cancer ranked No. 1 in the top 10 causes of cancer in Taiwan in 2016, claiming approximately 9,000 lives each year, and that it is also among the deadliest cancers in the US, making it a shared enemy of both nations.
While lung adenocarcinoma is the most common type of lung cancer in Taiwan and the US, there are differences in genetic mutations among patients in the two nations, he said, adding that a larger proportion of Taiwanese patients were found to have an epidermal growth factor receptor gene mutation.
Photo: CNA
Identification of the genetic mutations driving lung cancer is important for doctors to decide the cancer treatment strategy and targeted therapy, Yang said.
Nina Solarz, the wife of late US representative Stephen Solarz, who proposed bills in support of Taiwan and visited Taiwan several times, has established a memorial fund at the Foundation for the US National Institutes of Health in her husband’s memory to support cancer research, the university and hospital said.
The fund has supported the establishment of the new research laboratory in Taiwan, they said.
The five-year collaborative research project is to focus on the ethnic differences of the lung cancer genome and epigenetics in lung cancer diagnosis and therapy, as well as research on immunotherapy and stem cells.
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