Patrick, Boon Ooi Tan

Biography

Our research focuses on developing genomic approaches to unlock the molecular and clinical diversity of gastric cancer (aka stomach cancer)- the second highest cause of global cancer mortality. At present, most gastric cancer (GC) patients are clinically treated with uniform "one-size-fits-all" surgery and chemotherapy regimens. However, individual gastric tumors can often vary in their genetic aberrations, which can regulate disease aggressiveness and treatment response. To improve clinical outcomes for GC patients, our group is developing methods to classify different GC patients into distinct subgroups based on their molecular profiles, identifying specific “Achilles Heel” genes required for cancer development in each subgroup, and translating these discoveries into optimized and tailored subgroup-specific treatments. Over the past decade, our group has made important contributions to the GC field. We have defined transcriptional subtypes of GC (Tay et al, 2003; Tan et al., 2011) and translated these findings into an industry- international multi-centre clinical trial. We identified the first recurrent fusion genes in GC (BRAF fusions and CD44-SLC1A2) (Palanisamy et al., 2010 in collaboration with Arul Chinnaiyan; Tao et al., 2011), and reported the first comprehensive studies of somatic copy number alterations and epigenetic alterations in GC (Deng et al., 2012; Zouridis et al., 2012). In collaboration with Prof Teh Bin Tean and A/Prof Steve Rozen, we have also reported pioneering studies in applying next-generation sequencing to GC and other cancers endemic to Asia (Zang et al., 2012; Ong et al., 2012). Our group is a core pillar of the Singapore Gastric Cancer Consortium, a national multi-disciplinary team of >20 leading clinicians and researchers working together to improve our basic and clinical understanding of GC.

Research Interest

Genomic oncology of stomach cancer