The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-senUniversity (FAH-SYSU) announced to launch a new "Five-Year Collaboration Plan" to further advance oncology care and cancer research through comprehensive leadership training, talent cultivation, and clinician education programs with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (a principal teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School) at the FAH-SYSU / DFCI / BWH 3rd Joint Symposium on Academic Development & Medical Forum of the 15th Academic Festival at Zhongshan School of Medicine.

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The symposium was co-organized by the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University (FAH-SYSU), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Zhongshan School of Medicine on November 11 in Guangzhou. Several leading oncology experts across solid tumor and hematologist malignancies from Dana-Farber attended the conference in Guangzhou.

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Xiao Haipeng, President of the FAH-SYSU and Executive Vice President of Sun Yat-senUniversity, noted that "The symposium not only showcases the results of our collaborative efforts in tumor diagnosis and treatment, scientific research, and talent development, but also paves the way for our future endeavors."

Focusing on clinical research, quality in oncology, big data and database creation, and precision medicine, experts from FAH-SYSU, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Brigham and Women's Hospital shared their experience and exchanged in such fields as lung cancer, rectal cancer, breast cancer, intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, and gastric cancer.

During the symposium, Wu Yilong, Former President of the Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology (CSCO) delivered a keynote lecture on "Moving toward a cure for early-stage lung cancer with actional driver genes". Jeffrey Meyerhardt, Chief Clinical Research Officer of DFCI, shed light on the latest treatment for rectal cancer and discussed choosing the option best for different patients.

Statistics from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the WHO shows that there were 19.29 million new cancer cases and 9.96 million cancer-related deaths worldwide in 2020. Cancer remains a challenge to human health.

"As we face these universal challenges to health and well-being, global collaboration has never been more essential. It is only through collective efforts and pooling global expertise together that we can truly defeat cancer," said Xiao.

Founded in 1947, DFCI is an internationally renowned institute for cancer therapies. According to Xiao, FAH-SYSU and DFCI have forged a partnership since February of 2021 focusing on specialty advancement and telemedicine. The collaboration spans several fields including hematology, breast surgery, gastrointestinal surgery, urology, thoracic surgery, nursing, and pharmacy.

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"The scientific training and the technology here are very much similar to ours. There's a tremendous opportunity to further our research collaborations with big data and precision medicine," said Craig Bunnell, Chief Medical Officer of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

He thinks China has an advantage of gathering data and using that data for artificial intelligence, as well as the ability to conduct clinical trials, which is not being done elsewhere on the same scale. "We share similar strengths and we can work together on developing what those trials are, developing new treatments, new drugs, new interventions. And I think with the big data and artificial intelligence, the ability to together advance those fields is going to be explosive in the next several years," he added.

Link to the report: https://www.newsgd.com/node_99363c4f3b/4fb3d5878b.shtml