Evelyn Wong: SG Ramps Up Cancer Fight with S$50 million in National Grant Funding for Precision Oncology

Evelyn Wong, Medical Oncologist, National Cancer Centre Singapore, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“SG Ramps Up Cancer Fight with S$50 million in National Grant Funding for Precision Oncology – congrats to both Colo-SCRIPT and SYMPHONY 2.0

colorectal cancer oncology
It has been an absolute learning experience being part of the team focusing on colorectal cancer! And this push could not have come at a better time to expand our understanding and to develop new treatment options for colorectal cancer! Thanks Iain Tan for including us young oncologists on this amazing team.

In Singapore, colorectal cancer (CRC) is the most common cancer affecting both genders. There were 12,239 new cases of colorectal cancer diagnosed between 2017 and 2021, approximately 7 new cases a day!!

Led by Prof Iain Tan and Professor Wai Leong Tam, the Colo-SCRIPT (Colorectal cancer subtype-specific research informs phenotypes, diagnostics & treatments) research programme is co-led by the National Cancer Centre Singapore and A*STAR – Agency for Science, Technology and Research in collaboration with institutions in the SingHealth Duke-NUS AM Research Institute (AMRI), the National University Hospital, National University of Singapore, the Nanyang Technological University Singapore and NTU’s LKCMedicine, that will use a subtype-specific approach to improve the understanding of colorectal cancer so that for each subtype, the team can implement prevention and early detection strategies to reduce incidence, and test novel therapies in clinical trials.

Through 5 thematic areas (with the team leads):
Pre-cancer (Ashok Venkitaraman (GIS), Shyam Prabhakaran (GIS))
Molecular Epidemiology (Vinay Tergaonkar (IMCB), Sunny Wong (NTU))
Cellular Vulnerabilities (Wai Leong Tam (GIS), Patrick Tan (Duke-NUS)
Immunotherapy (Iain Tan (NCCS), Qi-Jing Li (IMCB))
and Detection and Characterisation (Joseph Sung (NTU), Tony Lim (SGH))

The programme will translate research findings to 2 key clinical applications termed ‘receptacles’: (1) improve the prevention and detection of CRC as a long-term strategy for reducing CRC incidence (Gloria Chan, NUH) ; and (2) bring new drugs into clinical trials for improving treatment outcomes for advanced colorectal cancer patients (Koo Si-Lin, NCCS)!”

Source: Evelyn Wong/LinkedIn