The National Cancer Center in Korea will participate as an official partner in gastric cancer research, a core task of the Cancer Moonshot, a project to conquer cancer led by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) under the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States. Observers say Korea's role is expanding in global cancer research that combines artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology.
The Human Tumor Atlas Network (HTAN) under NCI said on the 22nd that it had approved a joint study with the National Cancer Center's gastric cancer research team.
Launched in 2018 with NCI support, HTAN is a research consortium that aims to build a standard cancer atlas by precisely analyzing tumors and their surrounding microenvironment in three dimensions, including cellular, morphological, molecular, and spatial information.
The key to the partnership is that three-dimensional, space-based data from Korean gastric cancer patients will be built to HTAN international standards and used as reference data in new drug development by global pharmaceutical companies and AI corporations. Korea has largely served as a data provider in cancer research, but observers say the partnership marks a shift to participating as a producer of standard data.
The National Cancer Center previously signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with NCI and has maintained a cooperative relationship. Under the latest partnership, the center will analyze gastric cancer patient tissues in three dimensions and build so-called Spatial Multimodal Data that combines genetic and protein information. The data will be used for new drug development, predicting treatment response, and clinical trial design.
The current HTAN gastric cancer project is led by research directors including Professor Hwang Tae-hyun at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, alongside MD Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. Hwang's team has built an international track record in simultaneously analyzing three-dimensional spatial structures of tumors and molecular information.
In connection with the partnership, Hwang is co-developing an AI foundation model specialized in gastric cancer with LG AI Research. Based on data from patient groups that do not respond to immunotherapies, the model aims to identify new therapeutic targets and lead to the discovery of candidates for Antibody-Drug Conjugate (ADC) or CAR-T cell therapies through AI-based antibody design.
The HTAN gastric cancer project will also draw on technologies from domestic small, materials, and equipment corporations. Tomocube's 3D cell imaging technology, BioActs' staining technology, Bertis' protein analysis technology, MeteoBiotech's spatially based cell separation technology, and VPIX's intraoperative high-resolution imaging technology will be applied to the global standard research pipeline.
The research team expects that using domestic corporations' technologies in an international standard study will boost both data productivity and quality. The team said, "This HTAN gastric cancer partnership is meaningful because it goes beyond a simple joint study to build Korean gastric cancer data to international standards and create a structure that connects this to AI new drug development."