Liver and stomach cancers remain deadly without cure

• Liver and stomach cancers: second and third leading cause of cancer deaths
• Kills >1 million per year in China and Asia
• Current standard treatment: Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and/or targeted therapy – expensive, unpleasant side effects and limited benefits

Development and Progression of HCC

• Liver cancer is caused by multiple risk factors including viral hepatitis, fatty liver, NASH, alcoholics, and metabolic disorders, etc.
• Chronic liver diseases (such as hepatitis, fibrosis and cirrhosis) may lead to liver cancer development
• Many liver cancer patients die of tumor metastasis and recurrence

HBV infection is a major risk factor for liver cancer in Chinese patients

• Patients in the 50s and elders (without effective prevention and vaccination) are high-risk HBV carriers
• Current drugs are only effective to suppress the virus, but not able to cure or eliminate the HBV
• HBV integration into patient genome is a key mechanism to drive liver cancer development. We are among the first group to decode HBV integration into the human genome using translational medicine platform and NGS technology (see Nature Genetic 2012).
• This big-data knowledge allows scientists to better attack HBV and/or intercept HBV integration