The University of Macau (UM) announced that it has signed a cooperation agreement with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Institute of Oncology and Basic Medicine (IOBM) to establish a joint cancer research centre.
The first national research institute of life and health sciences in Zhejiang province, IOBM in Hangzhou is CAS’s first research institute of oncology and basic medicine.
The new center will tackle clinically oriented cancer research, prevention and treatment as well as cancer drug research and development, with the involved institutions to use omics techniques and tumour organoid culture methods to systematically conduct drug sensitivity tests and heavy-ion treatment and research.
It will also find malignant cancer drivers, markers, and characteristics, and will carry out drug development and clinical treatment.
According to the UM Faculty of Health Sciences chair professor, Chuxia Deng, with the gradual ageing of the Macau population, cancer is now the leading cause of death in the city, so he considered it imperative to strengthen cancer research locally.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, UM and IOBM had to two finalised the details of the agreement remotely via phone call, video conference, email, and express courier.
