Dr. Hsin-Yuan Fang

Deputy Superintendent of Surgery Department and Chief of X-Dimension Center

Cancer is one of the top ten major causes of death in Taiwan. Lung cancer specifically is ranked top of the list of ten major cancers. In the fight against cancer, there are many therapies on the market that provide more treatment possibilities for patients. However, the treatment strategy for cancer is determined by cancer treatment guidelines and the past experiences of physicians. There are many cases that do not reach the treatment goal expected in the treatment guidelines due to individual differences and uncertainty of the disease pathology and pharmacological mechanisms. During the back-and-forth process of changing approaches to therapy, patients feel more pressure in terms of physiological, psychological and economical aspects. 

The China Medical University Hospital Deputy Superintendent of the Surgery Department and Chief of the X-Dimension Center, Dr. Hsin-Yuan Fang, said that the cancer precise medicine market is estimated to reach more than US$400 billion by 2022. Among precise medicine, the market size of the most popular application in use – Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) – reached US$7.8 billion in 2019. This is estimated to increase to US$24.3 billion by 2025 with a 20.85% of CAGR. Therefore, cancer precise medicine is highly demanded on the market. The technology team of the CMUH X-Dimension Center has successfully applied clinical resources in the medical system and the in-vitro patient tumors drug precision screening platform under cross-territorial development to provide treatment guidance for physicians with more realistic predictions of treatment results. It can benefit cancer patients as well as show the power of biomedical technology in Taiwan. This technology won the 17^th National Innovation Research Innovation Award in 2020. In 2021 it won recognition of the Future Technology Award from the Ministry of Science and Technology and the 18^th National Innovation Advanced Progress Award. 

The drug precision screening platform developed by the X-Dimension Center technology team is called the “Patient-Derived Tumor Spheroid + Chip" (PDTS + chip)”, and is focused on the application to patients’ tumor cells to build an in-vitro model with similar tumor features and a micro-environment. By way of high throughput standardized tests, the test of the cancer drug’s efficacy on patients’ tumor cells in the 3D tumor spheroids chips, which are built to have the required physiological conditions in-vitro, can provide physicians with a precise medicine platform to predict realistic treatment effects in addition to standard treatment guidelines.  

Deputy Chief Yi-Wen Chen of the X-Dimension Center indicated that so far the “Patient-Derived Tumor Spheroid + Chip” technology has been put to the test in the CMUH lung cancer team and obtained highly clinical correlated results. According to the clinical verification results of lung cancer, the prediction value of the chip can offer an 85% accuracy rate, 80% specificity rate and 86.7% sensitivity rate. To achieve the best clinical application and elevate the popularity of this technology on the market, it has passed ISO 15189 review in November 2021. In the future, we aim to apply for the MOHW “Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs)” certification so this precise testing approach may provide clinicians with more possibilities and treatments in addition to treatment guidelines to help patients receive the most effective treatment. The team will continue to develop inspection kits of the tumor chip for breast cancer, colon cancer, rectum cancer, pancreatic cancer and brain cancer. It is expected that the technology can be developed to maturity and become a highly precise clinical routine test service in the future so the conditions of current medical and pharmaceutical industries change significantly and facilitate an upgrade of the quality of medicine.