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Globally, 1 in 6 deaths is due to cancer and about 50% of cancer incidence is from Asia. In Malaysia, 1 in 4 persons may develop cancer by the age of 75. With a disease that greatly affects our population, why are we so behind in the kind of technologies used to cure and prevent it?
Associate Professor Dr. Yeong Chai Hong, from Taylor’s School of Medicine, and an expert in nuclear medicine and interventional radiology, shares how her research targeted therapy will provide localized solutions
How a Research Project Can Help Reduce the Mortality Rate in Malaysia
Q: Can you share the different areas of your research project on targeted cancer therapy?
A: Currently, I’m working on targeted cancer therapy, theragnostic personalized dosimetry, and radiation protection in interventional radiology. For radiotherapy, we do treatment planning by looking at the 3D-image of the body and mapping the area to shoot the cancer cells and avoid the normal tissue which is done externally. Nuclear medicine, unlike radiotherapy, is when radioactive drugs are injected into your body to reach the targeted cancer cells.
Targeted cancer therapy, like nuclear medicine, is currently what I’m researching now. Theragnostic is a new terminology, which essentially combines therapy and diagnosis. What this means is that for every patient, we’d test and compare the drugs first so we’re able to give them one that is suited for them.
We use small amounts of the drugs, monitor where they go, and identify if the drugs used are able to kill the cancer cells. Once we’ve confirmed that it works, we’d give a higher dose. If it doesn’t, we’ll find different drugs that are better suited. This is what we call personalized dosimetry.
This research covers the UN sustainable development goals 3 on health, good health and well-being where, by 2030, we’d be able to reduce ⅓ premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being.
Q: What’s your inspiration behind the research?
A: I choose to do my research on cancer because it’s one of the most chronic diseases that affects a lot of people every single day. Globally, 1 in 6 deaths is due to cancer and about 50% of cancer incidence is from Asia. In Malaysia, 1 in 4 persons may develop cancer by the age of 75 whereas in the UK and US, 1 in 2 may be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime.
Because I’m in the medical physics field, I know that there are other treatments besides the conventional chemotherapy and radiotherapy that practices a one-size-fits-all method which many people know of. On the flipside, the majority of the public isn’t aware of the targeted cancer therapy. That’s why I wanted to study it in-depth so I can explain it to others.
Currently, we currently rely strongly on drug development from the Western countries. That said, we need to conduct our own research to collect local data and start local production of drugs and techniques for more affordable treatments.
The Biggest Issue Against Targeted Cancer Therapy in Malaysia
Q: Based on your observation, why is there a lack of these kinds of treatments in Malaysia?
A: We rely a lot on Western countries. Targeted therapy isn’t new and has been around for about 20 years. There are many challenges to it including the fact that new treatments need specialists which requires more time for doctors, who are already in their own specializations, to specialize again and learn the new techniques.
Generally we’ve 300 oncologists in Malaysia and it’s very hard to find the time to learn these new techniques. Even with treatments available, because they’re not equipped with new skills, it wouldn’t be wise for them to recommend it to their patients.
To add to that, this treatment would need to be done by new interventional specialists where they’d use CT scan or XR to see how the body reacts during treatment in real time. In the past, we’d need to perform surgery to locate and remove the cancer cell. With this, you can insert a needle and target the cancer cells directly. Unfortunately, most of these specialists don’t have their own clinics and rely heavily on the recommendation of oncologists.
The second reason is that public awareness is very poor in Malaysia. When I was doing my Ph.D. in the UK, I could converse with the cleaners and they’d know about these new technologies because they’re announced on the radio and news. Here, we rely very heavily on our doctors to provide us with information. If the awareness isn’t there for the doctors, it also won’t be there in the patients.
Q: Moving away from the one-size-fits-all methods and implementing these treatments, do you foresee any issues arising when we make the transition and how can we overcome them?
A: The biggest issue we have is related to money. We’ve to ask ourselves: Why are Western countries doing so well? Firstly, they’re more developed and secondly they’re also focused on personal treatment and prevention.
We’ve to be aware that cancer is chronic, not deadly, and can be treated as early as possible. We need to increase our research, which costs money, and run the proper diagnostics. The frequency of doing this would also cost money. While this may be easy for those who have money, for the underprivileged, it’s difficult.
However, if we want to reduce the mortality rate, we can’t just target those who’ve money but those who can’t afford these treatments as well. Otherwise, these statistics will never reduce. We need to make our treatments more affordable for the masses to use.
The main reason these drugs are so expensive is because we rely heavily on Western countries to import the drugs which involves a lot of hidden costs like licenses fee, certification, and FDA approval. These issues don’t benefit our community so we can have our own local manufacturers targeting our unique genetics. We also need to do a lot of research on this which, again, costs money.
Also, we need the support from the government to create a national or regional policy. Unfortunately, while we may have the money, we’re not focused and often invest in many buckets which doesn’t help create a big or impactful output. If we can have a good policy, we can really focus and share our resources to create the impact we want for our research.
Creating Awareness on Targeted Cancer Therapy for Our Asian Community
Q: How will this research contribute to society?
A: I’m currently one of the 13 Taylor’s Impact Labs leaders. My lab specifically promotes medical advancement for better quality of life. As educators, at the end of the day, we’re not only contributing to our students, we’re also contributing to the public. Each impact lab would focus on 3 different areas: education, research, and advocacy; and we’ve to involve the community, ensuring our output benefits the public.
We’d need to go out and listen to the community so we know how to contribute based on our expertise — which naturally revolves around teaching and researching. Teaching the community allows our students to participate and provide practical solutions or suggestions that they’ve practiced to the community.
Through Impact Labs, my lab will run a lot of public awareness campaigns, perhaps even monthly webinars. I’m also planning to use social media to reach others and spread these awareness in simple language.
Date: 8 Dec 2022
Source: https://university.taylors.edu.my/en/campus-life/news-and-events/news/taylors-case-study-helping-cancer-patients-through-targeted-cancer-therapy.html