The international collaborative study by researchers in the Institute of Clinical Medicine at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (hereinafter referred to as NYCU) and the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the United States measured various common metals in human serum found that six metals were related to the presence of gallstones and twelve metals were related to gallbladder cancer. Metal elements are necessary to maintain the body’s regular functions and are abundant in the natural environment. However, their levels of exposure is significantly matter. Extremely high or low concentrations of metals may associate with cancer development. In the past, only one or two metals could be simultaneously evaluated in blood due to technological limitations. The study utilized the ‘metallomics approach’ and measured multiple relevant metals at the same time. Most heavy metals were found to be risk factors for gallbladder cancer. It is the first large-scale case-control study to measure multiple metals to investigate their associations with gallbladder cancer.
The researchers focused on applying advanced approaches in combination with novel technologies to investigate potential risk factors or biomarkers for cancer development. By discovering these risk factors and biomarkers, these works facilitate the understanding of cancer etiology and high-risk patient identification. By taking liver cancer as an example, patients diagnosed with early-stage liver cancer are usually treated by curative surgical resections. However, tumor recurrence may still occur among nearly 70% of the patients who received surgery.
Prediction models for early recurrence of liver cancer after surgical resection remain necessary. The researchers in NYCU applied evolutionary learning to combine patients’ clinical information and the contrast-enhanced computed tomography images to innovate a prediction model for cancer recurrence for liver cancer patients after the operation. The accuracy of the model has been effectively improved. Due to its novelty and relevance, the work won the 2021 National Innovation Award.
The researchers at NYCU discovered genetic variants and the development of liver cancer by a high-throughput platform. They identified genetic variants associated with liver cancer across the whole genome of patients with chronic hepatitis virus infection in the Taiwanese population. They also integrated a large-scale database to investigate genetic variants on the likelihood of viral clearance after chronic viral infections. These studies emphasize the importance of host genetic background playing roles in disease progressions and provide clues for future functional studies.