December 2008:
CARIF researchers, in collaboration with the Principal Investigator, Dr Yap Yoke Yeow from University Putra Malaysia and co-Investigators at Kuala Lumpur General Hospital, Penang General Hospital, Hospital University Sains Malaysia, Sarawak General Hospital, University Sarawak (UniMAS), Hospital Likas and Queen Elizabeth Hospital, establish a collaboration with the Clinical Research Centre, Ministry of Health, BioLitec in Ireland & Malaysia, and Prof Bing I. Tan at The Netherlands Cancer Institute to conduct the investigator-led trial entitled “Phase II trial to determine the efficacy of Foscan Photodynamic Therapy versus Brachytherapy in the treatment of recurrent or residual nasopharyngeal cancer.

December 2008:
The Drug Discovery team’s paper, in collaboration with researchers at University Malaya and University Tunku Abdul Rahman, is accepted for publication in Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. They presented data that describes the screening and identification of light activated cytotoxic compounds from soil microorganisms collected in Peninsula Malaysia.

November 2008:
Together with the Digestive Diseases Club, Sime Darby Medical Centre, Sunway Medical Centre, Prince Court Medical Centre and University Malaya, CARIF hosts a one-day meeting entitled “Cancer Biology for Clinicians” at Prince Court Medical Centre. The one day meeting was aimed at providing a forum for discussion on how an understanding of cancer biology is making a dramatic impact on the way we prevent, diagnose and treat cancers. The meeting is attended by more than 100 doctors, scientists and students, with generous support from sanofi-Aventis, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb, Merck Serono, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Glaxo SmithKline, and Sime Darby Medical Centre.

November 2008:
The NPC team’s work, in collaboration with Professor Paul Murray in the University of Birmingham and Dr Paul Lim at Tung Shin Hospital is accepted for publication in Journal of Pathology. The study shows through microarray gene expression analysis that the DNA repair protein ATM is downregulated by the Epstein Barr Virus in nasopharyngeal cancer and opens up a new line of understanding of the mechanism by which nasopharyngeal cancer develops.

November 2008:
CARIF Group Leader for Oral Cancer Research, Dr. Cheong Sok Ching is one of three recipients of the prestigious L’Oreal Malaysia for Women in Science Award. The L’Oreal Award is the Malaysian chapter of the L’Oreal Unesco for Women in Science Award which has been rewarding outstanding achievements by women for more than a decade. The award, worth RM20,000 goes towards Dr Cheong’s work on using oral cancer cell lines that have been set up at CARIF as laboratory models to help us understand the disease better to improve on how we manage oral cancer patients.

November 2008:
The Oral Cancer team’s paper describing the differences in the gene expression patterns between oral cancer in smokers and those in betel quid chewers was accepted for publication in Oral Oncology. This data suggests that differences in aetiological factors should be taken into consideration in biomarker discovery particularly when these information influences the way we treat cancer patients. This work was done in collaboration with University Malaya, Oral Health Division, Ministry of Health, Sime Darby Medical Centre, National Institutes of Health USA and University of Bristol.

November 2008:
Together with University Malaya Faculty of Surgery, the International Union Against Cancer (UICC) Asia Regional Office, Medical University of Vienna and Prince Court Medical Centre, CARIF organizes a two day meeting on Asian Breast Cancer Research. The meeting which brought together researchers from Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Austria and USA, had symposia on genetic epidemiology of breast cancer in Asia, clinic pathological features of breast cancer in Asia and early detection and clinical trials in Asia. The meeting was preceded by a one day workshop on “Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer” at Prince Court Medical Centre.

October 2008:
CARIF researchers are awarded the top two prizes for the Best Free Paper Presentations at the Malaysian Oncological Society Annual Meeting held in Kota Kimball, Sabah. Dr Teo presented the results of the collaborative effort by CARIF and University Malaya researchers to dissect the genes that cause an increased risk to breast cancer in Malaysian women, whilst Ms Sharifah Nurain Syed Zanaruddin presented a molecular signature with the potential to help with oral cancer prognostication.

September 2008:
CARIF Drug Discovery Researcher, Ms Tang Yee Voon is awarded a Travel Award to present her work on photosensitizes from Malaysia’s seaweeds at the International Phytochemical Society of Europe Symposium on Natural Products in Cancer Therapy in Naples, Italy. Ms Tang’s work is selected for oral presentation. It was conducted in collaboration with Prof Phang Siew Moi in Universiti Malaya and Dr Chu Wan Loy in International Medical University, and describes screening of 14 Malaysian seaweeds in Port Dickson for light-activated cytotoxic activity followed by isolation of the active compounds from a brown and a green species.

August 2008:
CARIF work in collaboration with University Malaya is presented at the kConFab Familial Cancer Conference in Brisbane, Australia. In addition, Ms Yoon Sook-Yee’s abstract is selected for oral presentation. Her work, a collaborative effort between University Malaya and CARIF, describes the first study of providing genetic counseling in a multi-ethnic multi-religious country for genetic predisposition to breast cancer.

July 2008:
CARIF Drug Discovery Researcher, Mr Fadzly Adzhar is awarded a Travel Award to present his work on photosensitisers from Malaysia’s higher plants at the 5th International Conference on Porphyrins & Phthalocyanines in Moscow, Russia. Mr Fadzly’s work, conducted in collaboration with Prof Nordin Lajis in Universiti Putra Malaysia, describes isolation of 8 photosensitising compounds from an endemic plant known as Piper Penangense

July 2008:
CARIF Group Leader for Oral Cancer Research, Dr. Cheong Sok Ching was awarded e-Science grant from Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) to investigate the functional role of putative oral cancer genes discovered through microarray studies that were conducted on formalin fixed paraffin embedded samples. This work is a collaboration between CARIF and the OCRCC (Oral Cancer Research and Coordinating Centre), University Malaya.

July 2008:
The breast cancer research team, together with University Malaya, publishes a paper on the frequency and spectrum of genetic alterations in the breast cancer genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, in Malaysian women in Breast Cancer Research. This paper shows that the majority of mutations which are found in Malaysian women are novel and that the risk prediction models which have been established mainly based on multiplex families and in populations which have higher incidence of breast cancer, significantly underpredicted the number of carriers in Malaysia. This work highlights the urgency of developing better risk prediction models for Asians.

July 2008:
CARIF is awarded an equipment grant of RM3.5 million from the Malaysian Ministry of Health for cancer research. The grant will be used to purchase the Sequenom MassArray System, Life Imaging Microscope and Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometer (LCMS). The Sequenom MassArray System is the first high-throughput genotyping facility in Malaysia that is a scalable platform offering applications for quantitative and qualitative genomic analysis. The Life-cell Imaging Microscope will be used to facilitate the in vitro work that CARIF is conducting. in dissecting the role of key genes in driving oral and nasopharyngeal cancer development. The LCMS facility will aid in the dereplication of our natural extracts as well as the identification of the structures isolated from our natural resources.

June 2008:
CARIF Drug Discovery Researcher, Mr Lim Siang Hui is awarded a Travel Award to present his work at the British Association for Cancer Research/European Association for Cancer Research Symposium in Nottingham, United Kingdom. Mr Lim’s work, conducted in collaboration with Prof Kevin Burgess in Texas A&M University in United States of America, describes in vitro studies on a new class of cytotoxic lipophilic cations as potential anti-cancer agents.

June 2008:
CARIF Group Leader for Drug Discovery, Dr Lee Hong Boon, is awarded the Wellcome Trust Advanced Course Bursary to attend a specialist workshop on Drug Discovery at the Sanger Institute, Cambridge United Kingdom. The workshop provided training on the practical aspects of managing a drug discovery programme.

June 2008:
CARIF Group Leader for Oral Cancer Research, Dr. Cheong Sok Ching is awarded the UICC Fellowship to conduct collaborative research in the laboratory of Professor Stephen Prime, University of Bristol. Dr Cheong Sok Ching and Mr Chong Chan Eng establish methods to create 3D cultures of oral cancer to study the function of putative oral cancer genes.

June 2008:
The Oral Cancer team’s work conducted in collaboration with University Malaya and other collaborators entitled ‘MDM2 SNP309 does not confer and increased risk to oral squamous cell carcinoma but may modulate the age of disease onset’ is accepted for publication in Oral Oncology. The paper reports that a single nucleotide change in the MDM2 gene does not increase the risk to oral cancer in general but may modify the age of oral cancer onset in women above the age of 55 years.

April 2008:
CARIF researchers win two awards at the American Association for Cancer Research Meeting in San Diego USA. CARIF CEO, Dr Teo Soo Hwang, is awarded the NCI-AACR International Investigator’s Opportunity Grant and CARIF Post-Doctoral Scientist, Dr Yap Lee Fah is awarded the American Association for Cancer Research ITO EN Ltd Scholar-in-training Award. Dr Teo presents the results of the collaborative effort by CARIF and University Malaya in determining the utility of risk prediction models on Asian populations. Dr Yap presents the results of a study that investigates the role of an oncogene in oral cancer.

April 2008:
The breast cancer research team’s paper on the prevalence of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations in young Malaysian breast cancer patients is published in PlosOne. This paper describes the incidence of genetic alterations in the breast cancer genes amongst young women who develop breast cancer.

April 2008:
CARIF Drug Discovery Research, Ms Nurkhalida Kamal is awarded a Travel Award to present her work at the European Science Foundation-Cooperation in Science & Technical Research (ESF-COST) High Level Research Conference in Italy. Ms Nurkhalida’s work, conducted in collaboration with Prof Vikineswary Sabaratnam and Dr Noorlidah Abdullah in Universiti Malaya, describes screening of various soil microbial extracts from Peninsular Malaysia for photo-cytotoxicity followed by isolation of the active components from two of the active extracts from photosynthetic bacteria.

March 2008:
CARIF CEO, Dr Teo Soo Hwang and Post-doctoral researcher, Dr Eswary Thirthagiri, are awarded the Malaysian British High Commissioners Bilateral Award to visit the laboratory of Professor Hani Gabra at Imperial College London and to establish a new collaborative effort in ovarian cancer research.

March 2008:
The Oral Cancer team signs an agreement for research collaboration with Bioinformatics Institute, Biomedical Sciences Institute, Singapore to work on microarray data generated at CARIF.