SEOUL, KOREA — Ministry of Health and Welfare (Minister Rim Chae-min) informed that Korea is joining ICGC (International Cancer Genome Consortium) as the fourteenth country. There was an announcement that Korea is joining as a new member” in Canada in the morning of 15 Mar. 2012 (local time) where ICGC headquarters are located. ICGC is the largest and most ambitious research project in the field of biotechnology and medical science after the human genome project. This consortium aims to conduct international joint researches on genome, transcriptome, and epigenome, etc. concerning 50 kinds of cancer that hold clinical and social importance. This consortium began with eight countries in 2008 and now has research teams from 13 nations involved including US, UK and Japan, by which, 45 project are currently conducted.
Korea’s involvement in ICGC will be led by the “consolidated strategy center for the customized medicine for cancer genome (headed by Professor Gong, Goo of Hanyang University)” of the “genome project team for the next generation customized medicine (headed by Professor Kim, Hyung Rae of Ewha University)” of Ministry of Health and Welfare. Korea will first participate in an ICGC breast cancer project and 1 billion won of research investment each year for the next five years will be made to international joint researches.
This ICGC breast cancer project is jointly carried out by Sanger Institute in UK. It compares and analyzes* the breast cancer genome data between Koreans and Westerners and identifies unique cancer genome changes concerning breast cancer. It will be used to develop a breast cancer early diagnosis technology and customized treatment technology for individuals.
Analysis will be done through the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS): The process of decoding the DNA sequencing data, which consists of genetic data of a life. This is a technology that analyzes the DNA sequence with far lower cost at a faster pace in a far larger scale than before.
In the future, the personalized medicine for cancer center will extend its research subjects to lung cancer, liver cancer, colorectal cancer, stomach cancer, etc which are the most common cancer types among Koreans and carry out international joint researches on them.
Ministry of Health and Welfare added the significance to the nation’s involvement in ICGS by saying that it is a result of Korea’s genome medicine research level and technology being recognized worldwide and the personalized genome medicine is one of the most promising areas in Korea.
The ministry also said that it expects that the personalized medicine for the five most common types of cancer among Koreans will soon be realized through such international joint researches.
