Cancer Prevention Research

The Division of Cancer Prevention Research was established as an independent unit of Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center in November 2013, and became the attached institution of Guangdong Cancer Center Office in 2016. The department is now the vice chairman unit of the Tumor Epidemiology Professional Committee of Guangdong Anti-cancer Association.

At present, the department has a total of 12 staff members, including 1 director (concurrently director of Guangdong Cancer Center Office), 1 associate researcher, 1 office secretary, 1 tumor registrar, 1 technician and several research assistants and experimenters. The department covers an area of more than 200 square meters, including office room, meeting room, cancer registration room, laboratory, biological specimen bank and archives room.

The researchers have devoted themselves for several decades to conduct screening and early detection of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) in high-risk area of Guangdong province, and have continuously won the National Key Technology R&D Programs of China from the 7th Five-Year Plan to the 14th Five-Year Plan. The department has established an NPC screening cohort recruiting 60,000 population, and launched a convenient, simple and stable brand-new screening method based on ELISA to detect serum VCA/IgA and EBNA1/IgA which has been recognized as a standard NPC screening method to be promoted nationwide by Cancer Foundation of China. 

In addition, the department has undertaken national major public health projects such as China’s Rural Cancer Screening Program (2006) and Urban Cancer Screening Program (2016), and won the excellent organization and management award of national urban cancer screening project in 2018. The types of tumors screened include lung cancer, colorectal cancer, upper gastrointestinal cancer, breast cancer, liver cancer and nasopharyngeal cancer.

As the provincial cancer center office, in the past two years, our department has assisted Guangdong Provincial Health Commission and Guangdong Cancer Center in establishing 21 municipal cancer centers and 31 county-level cancer centers, gradually promoting the establishment and improvement of a multi-level cancer prevention and control system in Guangdong province.

In order to meet the new challenges, our department plans to further expand the study scope, improve the research level, and attract talents to build an international study platform for cancer prevention. We will make unremitting efforts to achieve the goals of Healthy China and Healthy Guangdong.

Main duties
Scientific Research
- to explore the trends and regulations of cancer incidence and mortality in Guangdong province;
- to discover the etiological factors and pathogenesis of common tumors in Southern China;
- to develop and evaluate new indicators and early diagnosis methods for cancer prevention; 
- to demonstrate and spread new models and measures of cancer prevention, and evaluate the effectiveness of cancer prevention and control.

Organizational Administration
- to liaise with the National Cancer Center, Guangdong Provincial Health Commission and other superior units to assist in the formulation of provincial planning of cancer prevention and control;
- to coordinate regional medical institutions and center for disease control and prevention at all levels to establish and improve the comprehensive cancer prevention and control network covering Guangdong province;
- to manage the bases and projects of cancer early diagnosis and treatment in Guangdong province, and to carry out the program supervision, quality control and effect evaluation;
- to organize and carry out science popularization and health education activities for cancer prevention and treatment;
- to organize the formulation and release of guidance documents and technical standards related to cancer prevention and control.

Scientific achievements
In recent five years, our department has carried out three projects supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No.2020YFC1316905, No.2017YFC0907102, No.2016YFC0902000), hosted two surface projects of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 82073625, No. 81872700), and hosted two provincial science and technology projects of Guangdong province. From 2016 to 2021, more than 40 SCI papers were published by our researchers in journals such as Ann Oncol, Clin Cancer Res, Cancer Commun, Eur J Cancer, Int J Cancer, Cancer and others.

Contact us
Tel: +86-20-87345682
E-mail: gdcc@sysucc.org.cn

Updated November 2021