July 3, 2012, London, United Kingdom, and Shenzhen, China – The symposium themed "The Era of Next Generation Sequencing in Cancer", co-organized by BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, and Imperial College London, was successfully conducted in London, UK. Around 70 experts, scholars, and representatives from the local colleges, institutes and biotechnology industries attended the meeting with the aim to exchange their insights on high-throughput genomics and accelerate the further development of cancer research.
The symposium started with a friendly opening remark by Professor Charles Coombes, Director of Division of Cancer, Imperial College, and Hon Consultant Medical Oncologist, Imperial College Healthcare Trust. He was delighted to be the chairman of the symposium, and said:" The symposium is a good start between Imperial College London and BGI. We are looking forward to more collaboration with BGI, one of the largest genomics organizations in the world. We are confident that we will make more breakthroughs together in the near future."
After that, experts delivered several excellent presentations highlighting the advancements in cancer research, including "Cancer genome research in BGI", "Understanding estrogen receptor transcription in breast cancer", "Genetic analysis of five cancers using single-cell sequencing", "Genetic regulation of the rat cardiac methylome", "Personalized epigenetic therapy in follicular lymphoma", "Biomarker discovery through integrated next-generation sequencing (NGS) genomic analysis of neuroendocrine tumors", among others.
Yingrui Li, Vice Director of BGI, shared several case studies on cancer genome research applying BGI's NGS and bioinformatics technologies. He referred that the object of their studies is to make more contributions in cancer research and boost the transformation of scientific discoveries to benefit human health. He emphasized that, "NGS technologies, especially single-cell sequencing technology, elevate cancer research to a new level, enabling researchers to conduct cancer studies for the treatment and diagnosis of cancer at the cellular level and whole-genome level."
Cancer genome research has been one of the most important fields in life science. With the rapid development of the NGS technologies, it allows researchers to comprehensively explore the characteristics underlying cancers. The symposium brought together leading scientists and researchers from UK and China, providing a truly international platform for strengthening the academic cooperation and communication between the two countries.
About Imperial College London
Imperial College embodies and delivers world class scholarship, education and research in science, engineering, medicine and business, with particular regard to their application in industry, commerce and healthcare. We foster multidisciplinary working internally and collaborate widely externally.
The Imperial Academic Healthcare Science Centre was the first of its kind in the UK. It combines the healthcare expertise of our five hospitals within the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust with the academic excellence of Imperial College London, one of the world's leading universities. Imperial is also a National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre and part of the network of Experimental Cancer Medicines Centres across the UK. Imperial is committed to promoting a unified culture that spans research to patient care across its entire workforce and the Centre continues to enhance this.
The Imperial Cancer Research Centre unites the largest NHS trust in the UK, with world-class research expertise to tackle cancer. It enhances existing collaborations between the different disciplines to conduct the highest quality cancer research and translate cutting-edge research in our embedded academic departments into improved patient care and personalised medicine. The Imperial Cancer Research Centre and the Academic Health Science Centre are structured to optimise alignment of services, research and education priorities, encouraging daily communication between clinicians and researchers to translate research from the bench to bedside. The benefit of enhanced infrastructure support, multidisciplinary working, the integrated structure of research and services, and access to increased patient resource will ensure successful delivery of translational research and implementation of the Centre's vision.
For more information about Imperial College London, please visit http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/
For more information about the Imperial Cancer Research Centre, please visit http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/surgeryandcancer/crukcentre/
About BGI
BGI was founded in Beijing, China on September 9th, 1999 with the mission of being a premier scientific partner to the global research community. The goal of BGI is to make leading-edge genomic science highly accessible through its investment in infrastructure that leverages the best available technology, economies of scale, and expert bioinformatics resources. BGI, and its affiliates, BGI Americas and BGI Europe, have established partnerships and collaborations with leading academic and government research institutions as well as global biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, supporting a variety of disease, agricultural, environmental, and related applications.
BGI has established a proven track record of excellence, delivering results with high efficiency and accuracy for innovative, high-profile research which has generated over 170 publications in top-tier journals such as Nature and Science. These accomplishments include sequencing one percent of the human genome for the International Human Genome Project, contributing 10 percent to the International Human HapMap Project, carrying out research to combat SARS and German deadly E. coli, playing a key role in the Sino-British Chicken Genome Project, and completing the sequence of the rice genome, the silkworm genome, the first Asian diploid genome, the potato genome, and, most recently, 1000 genomes and human Gut metagenome.
For more information about BGI, please visit www.genomics.cn.