Fang Jingyuan leads digestive cancer team to win the first prize of Shanghai Science and Technology Progress Award
Recently, good news came from the Science and Technology Commision of Shanghai Municipality that director of Department of Gastroenterology in our hospital and the director of the Shanghai Institute of Digestive Disease, Professor Fang Jingyuan and his research team were awarded the first prize of 2014 annual Shanghai Science and Technology Progress Award for their project "The relationship between proliferation-related signaling pathways, epigenetic modification and the incidence, early warning and prevention of gastrointestinal cancer". This was in recognition of his outstanding contributions in the field of mechanism of pathogenesis and early prevention of maglignant gastrointestinal cancer.
Gastrointestinal cancer is a serious threat to human health, which is one of the "the number one killers". According to the statistical data from WHO in 2012, the global incidence of gastric cancer and colorectal cancer rank the second and fourth of all malignant tumors, and the number of deaths are the third and fourth respectively. In our country, the incidence situation of gastrointestinal cancer is also very grim. New incidence of gastric and colorectal cancer in 2013 ranked the second and third of all cancers in our country, and the mortality ranked the second and fifth respectively. Moreover, the incidence of gastrointestinal cancer shows a "younger" trend with an escalating incidence in youth. Its insidious onset and low early screening rate result in many late-stage patients upon discovery leading to low survival and life quality. To solve this problem, Fang Jingyuan and his team make a long-term commitment to study the mechanism of pathogenesis and intervention measures for gastrointestinal cancer. They found that stomach cancer and colorectal cancer are directly associated with specific "pre-cancerous disease", atrophic gastritis and colorectal adenomas, before the onset of the disease. How can effective intervention in the "pre-cancerous disease" stage bring the ferocious cancer strangled in the "cradle" is always the direction of the research team.
Hard work pays off. After their hard work, Fang Jingyuan’s team finally found the efficacy of folic acid for early intervention of adenoma, which is the "pre-cancerous disease" of colorectal cancer. Folic acid, a white tablet valuing a few cents, is only used as a preventive drug for pregnant women to prevent fetal malformation in people’s minds in the past. But now, the team also found that it has the effect of stabilizing genes. Numerous studies indicate that the pathogenesis of gastrointestinal cancer is related to the abnormal epigenetic modification caused by abnormal gene expression and regulatory disorder, which is a very valuable target for warning of gastrointestinal cancer. The team clarify the primary prevention role of folic acid in colorectal adenomas after seven years of basic and clinical research. "We have for the first time demonstrated the positive preventive role of folic acid in the prevention of initial occurrence of sporadic colorectal adenomas in a prospective randomized controlled clinical intervention trials. This test combined a number of domestic medical units and recruited volunteers. The volunteers were aged 50 or more, without adenoma diagnosed via colonoscopy before participating. They were randomized into folic acid group and the control group, each included 384 and 407 people respectively. After three years of trials, we checked colonoscopy for all the volunteers once again. The results demonstrated that there were 56 people who developed nonprogressive adenoma and 8 people who developed progressive adenomas in the folic acid group; while in the control group without folic acid, the two data were up to 110 and 22 respectively. Therefore, the visible effect of folic acid for the prevention of initial occurrence of colorectal adenomas is very obvious. "Fang Jingyuan said. Together with the previously proved effective intervention of folic acid in chronic atrophic gastritis, folic acid, which is an ancient, no side-effects and inexpensive vitamin pills, shines as the primary prevention of gastrointestinal cancer under the exploration of Fang Jingyuan’s team. But Professor Fang reminded that, not everyone is suitable for folic acid, unless after a careful history inquiry and a detection of folate concentrations in blood.
In addition to discover the role of folic acid in effective primary prevention of gastrointestinal cancer, Fang Jingyuan’s team has also launched a series of studies focusing on establishing outcome warning of precancerous gastrointestinal disease, and new models of risk factor analysis and early warning. They have made remarkable achievements attracting attention by the world's scholars of digestive disease. They firstly created and validated a mathematical model for early warning between incidence and outcomes of atrophic gastritis, based on patient gender, general health, family history, tastes, eating habits, and etc. The establishment of the scientific, high-accuracy cancer risk mathematical formulas is proven to be effective through multi-center evaluation. In 2012, the mathematical model was officially incorporated into the "Chinese Chronic Gastritis Consensus." They are the first to discover the low expression of miR
Although professor Fang Jingyuan has made a number of research achievements attracting the attention of the scholars of digestive disease, and has appeared in important national research programs such as Innovative Team Project from Ministry of Education and NSFC Innovative Research Groups, and has a lot of achievements included in the consensus or written materials that are promoted and applied in the country or even the world, he is still very modest when talking about future goals,. He admitted that digestive disease research is like an exploration in a vast ocean. The current achievements by human exploration may just be the iceberg of great treasures. No one can tell how much is the treasure. So for the team, scientific exploring is endless. In future, the team will continue to study primary prevention of gastrointestinal cancer, especially the recurrent mechanisms and interventions of precancerous disease. They strive to continue the advantages of multi-center collaborations, and hope to own a set of scientific research and clinical patents with completely independent intellectual property rights. They would make unremitting efforts for guiding the subject of gastroenterology in