Genomic sequencing puts Hong Kong at forefront of cancer care innovation

Genomic sequencing has helped Hong Kong identify the right treatments for cancer patients more quickly, according to an expert who also suggested that the city could be a “super-linker” between mainland China and the rest of the world in drug development.\nAya El Helali, a clinician-scientist in medical oncology at the University of Hong Kong, praised how collaboration within the Greater Bay Area had opened up opportunities to run clinical trials faster and at lower costs – factors that appealed to global pharmaceutical companies.\nThe use of genomic medicine, which examines a person’s genetic information to tailor healthcare, could help to not only diagnose rare diseases but also determine the effectiveness of medications.\n“We’re allowing all patients to have access to potential therapies that might affect their survival,” said El Helali, who spoke in a sideline interview at the International Symposium on Genomic Medicine in Hong Kong last month.\nEl Helali, a clinical assistant professor with HKU’s department of clinical oncology, said the use of genomic sequencing had significantly shortened the time needed to identify suitable treatments for brain cancer patients to just one or two years – compared with the traditional approach that took five to 10 years.\nSharing her research on patients with glioblastoma, the most aggressive type of brain cancer, which was “very difficult to treat”, the doctor said in-depth genomic sequencing was performed on patients’ tumours to find the specific “keyhole” that a new drug could target.\nThe drug was then administered to patients, followed by another round of genomic sequencing on the tumour.\n“What this allows us to do is to understand … is this drug getting into the brain tumour for these patients?” she said.\n“If it is not, then we stop exploring this drug completely because we know it’s never going to work for our patients.”\nAs this sequencing can be conducted during the first phase of a clinical trial, which usually takes about one to two years, researchers will be able to determine much earlier whether the drug may work on a larger scale.\n“This saves us from investing another five to eight years in futile larger trials,” El Helali said.\nShe added that the traditionally adopted research approach required testing through phases of one to three clinical trials, with researchers learning only at the end – after five to 10 years – whether the drug was effective.\n“For brain tumours, we sometimes discover too late that the drug couldn’t effectively cross the blood-brain barrier to reach the tumour, meaning all that time was invested for a result that didn’t help patients,” she said.\nWhile global data show that 90 per cent of glioblastoma patients could die within 15 months of diagnosis, the HKU professor said some patients who underwent genomic sequencing had survived for five to seven years.\nWhile work is still under way to determine the effectiveness of the newer approach for glioblastoma patients, El Helali said other cancers – including those of the ovaries, breasts and lungs – could also benefit from genomic sequencing.\nPatients recruited for a clinical trial do not need to pay for the sequencing. However, those unable to join a matching study may have to pay between US$200 and US$4,000 (HK$1,550 to HK$31,000), depending on the scale of the test.\nAs an adviser to the Greater Bay Area International Clinical Trial Institute (GBAICTI) – a Hong Kong government initiative launched in 2024 – El Helali said the city had several advantages that could make it a bridge between the mainland and the global community.\n“We do leverage a lot of international standards that we do have in Hong Kong that make it very, very unique,” she said.\nShe added that clinical trial studies published by Hong Kong researchers were highly respected worldwide because of the quality of data collection and strong intellectual property protection.\n“The super linker is going to be in the GBAICTI, with Hong Kong being the bridge to allowing a lot of the Chinese biopharmaceutical companies to enter into the rest of the world, and for international drugs to be able to enter into China,” she said.\nWith closer collaboration between Hong Kong and other mainland cities in the bay area – which has a population of more than 86 million – El Helali said it could become easier to recruit patients for clinical trials at lower costs, making the region more attractive to pharmaceutical companies.\nAs the Hong Kong Genome Institute is conducting a large-scale genome sequencing project that has already recruited more than 52,000 participants, the professor said pharmaceutical companies could be interested in the data to assess drug development needs for the Asian population, which accounts for 60 per cent of the global total.\n“The superconnector for Hong Kong for the rest of the world is the fact that we have not [only] opened up our clinical trial potential, but we have also opened up our genomic sequencing potential as well,” she said.\n