Translational oncology toward benefiting cancer patients: the Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center experience

Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center (SYSUCC) is currently conducting many translational studies to improve cancer pa-tients’ condition through early diagnosis, discovering new treatments, improving treatment outcomes, and better classification and prognosis of cancer. SYSUCC is a leading institution for treating nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and carrying out re-search into the disease. The center has performed several large-scale studies that have produced new insights, such as a ge-nome-wide analysis study, which has allowed researchers to identify new genetic risk factors for NPC; the findings are signif-icant toward building a risk prediction model for NPC. Other researchers are using molecular biological methods to identify new biomarkers, which will allow a better classification and prognosis of this disease. Drug discovery, especially for molecular targeted therapy, is also an active field of research at SYSUCC, not only for NPC treatment, but also for, among others, can-cers of the head, neck, and liver. As an alternative to Western medicine, scientists also use derivatives of natural products from Traditional Chinese Medicine to develop new compounds. The tumor biobank at SYSUCC, one of the largest in China, play an essential role in producing clinical applications from research findings. Translational oncology is a promising field, and scien-tists and clinicians from SYSUCC will continue to work in synergy to develop new anticancer therapies.