Source: Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center
Written by: Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

In August of 2015, Young Investigators Workshop (YIW) was held in Oslo, Norway. It was jointly organized by the MD Anderson Cancer Center GAP workshop and Oslo University Hospital. The workshop invited scholars engaged in basic, translational or clinical research from MD Anderson Cancer Center and its sister institutes. The young scholars from all over the world including the United States, France, Spain, India, China, etc. came together and participated in this grand event. The theme of this workshop is “Immune system and Microenvironments - Implications for Cancer Therapy".

Professor Qingqing Cai from Department of Medical Oncology of Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center (SYSUCC) was invited to speak at the meeting. She presented “the impact of MYC and BCL-2 over-expression on the prognosis of patients with mantle cell lymphoma". Professor Cai's team discovered that about 20% of patients with mantle cell lymphoma had high expression of both MYC and BCL-2, and these patients showed poor response to conventional treatment and dismal prognosis, suggesting more aggressive biological behavior in this kind of mantle cell lymphoma. New targeted therapy might further improve survival. Her presentation provided theoretical basis for the realization of “Precision Medicine” for mantle cell lymphoma. Professor Cai’s coherent description and exquisite slides were highly praised by the participants.
Dr. Liang Wang from Department of Hematologic Oncology of SYSUCC also made a wonderful presentation at the workshop. His topic was "High level of soluble programmed death ligand 1(PD-L1) in serum predicts treatment resistance and poor progression free survival in multiple myeloma”. In recent years, PD-1 / PD-L1, the immune checkpoint, has played an important role in tumor progression and drug resistance. Dr. Wang found that higher level of sPD-L1 was significantly associated with relapsed or refractory myeloma, suggesting therapy targeted against PD-1/PD-L1 might be able to overcome the drug resistance of myeloma and therefore improve the prognosis. The audiences were deeply impressed by Dr. Wang’s accurate expression, professional language, fluency in English and good time management skills.
At the end of his lecture, Dr. Wang introduced Chinese Journal of Cancer (CJC) established by SYSUCC. “With the efforts of many hospital leaders’ and public authors’, CJC is one of China's most influential international academic journals and since July 2014 it has been SCI indexed, becoming an international journal of Oncology with far-reaching international influence." The Participants listened carefully and had a lively discussion at the workshop, and showed their interest in publishing their research in CJC in the future.

The conference was surrounded by rich academic atmosphere. The active communication and discussion achieved great exchange effect. The wonderful academic presentations with novel and rich contents from Professor Qingqing Cai and Dr. Liang Wang demonstrated young doctors’ image from SYSUCC, letting foreign colleagues acknowledge our hospital’s clinical and research level, and thus promoting more extensive cooperation on clinical and experimental research in the future.