Businessman Terry Gou (郭台銘), best known as chairman of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., announced Sunday he planned to create a global alliance of leading research institutes to combat breast cancer.
▲圖／翻攝自中國郵報
The project will be based in a medical zone on Kinmen, the Central News Agency reported. Additional details about the zone are set to be announced in two months' time.
Gou and his nongovernmental organization YongLin Healthcare Foundation held a press conference Sunday to announce the global alliance, which will include BGI, NantWorks, HudsonAlpha and the National Taiwan University Hospital Cancer Center.
"Today is the 12th year anniversary of my first wife Serena Lin's (林淑如) death," Gou said.
"I remember back to the two of us dressed in matching couple's outfits at Hangzhou's Xihu on our honeymoon, declaring that we would spend 50 years of marriage together. But I lost her after 30 years."
Lin died of complications from breast cancer in 2005.
Gou said Sunday that "people should turn regret into strength" and that he intended for his new medical project to have "a budget without an upper limit."
"In the future, we hope to enable all ethnic Chinese cancer patients around the world to enjoy highly precise medical care and targeted treatment," he said.
Breast Cancer: the No. 4 Killer
At the Sunday press conference, Gou said that the initial goal of the project would be to tackle breast cancer in ethnic Chinese women. The second, he said, may be to cure leukemia.
Some types of cancer, notably breast cancer and lung cancer, occur much more frequently among ethnic Chinese than they do among Caucasians.
Breast cancer is the most frequently occurring cancer among Taiwanese women: For every 100,000 women in Taiwan, nearly 70 develop breast cancer every year. According to latest data, breast cancer is also the fourth-deadliest form of cancer in Taiwan.
This alliance brings together key specialists in oncology, biotechnology and genome research to analyze the genetic factors behind the higher rates of breast cancer om the ethnic Chinese population and to develop new drugs and treatments.
Gou said he aimed to announce a detailed plan for the cancer treatment alliance within two months' time.
A China-Taiwan Alliance
One of the key partners in Gou's alliance is China's BGI (formerly known as the Beijing Genomics Institute), which is one of the world's largest genome-sequencing centers.
The alliance between genome technology giant BGI and Gou's leading manufacturing company Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. would certainly bring about beneficial breakthroughs in the field of medicine, BGI Chairman Wong Chien (汪建) said.
Since its founding in 1999, BGI has amassed a large database of genome information and the capability to provide clinical-grade and research-use services to clients.
Chien commented that BGI would be revealing a plan for combating cancer globally in the future in the hope that cancer would become a controllable chronic disease before becoming a rare disease in subsequent years.
He said his goal was to make genetic testing available for everyone, a process that could be beneficial in the preventative care of those with a family history of cancer.
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