The establishment in Tianjin Friday of the country's first laboratory on tumor-related gene chips will lead to new biological breakthroughs in the struggle against cancer.

Experts from the Taiji Oncological Microarray Center at Tianjin Medical University will study advanced gene chips that can help detect tumors in their rudimentary form, the major factors making people susceptible, and how they develop.

These results will lead to more advanced forecasting, early medication, individual therapy and clinic diagnosis, experts said.

Cancer takes 6 million lives around the world every year. In China alone, 1.3 million people die of the illness annually, according to official data.

Every year, an additional 9 million people are afflicted -- 1.6 million of them Chinese.

The country has witnessed a 3 percent year-on-year growth in the number of cancer patients.

The laboratory will exchange staff researchers with the US-based M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, an early bird in the fledgling tumor gene chip research.

Taiji Group, a pharmaceuticals firm in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, has injected 2.5 million yuan (US$300,000) into the lab for research funds.

The lab has attained a key state-orchestrated project to develop patented gene chips to treat breast cancer.

Experts hope the lab can catapult the country's gene chip renovation into the world's top list.

Last year, China's involvement in the decade-long Human Genome Project, in which researchers worldwide mapped a working draft of the chemical letters that form human DNA, ranked the country as one of the world's leading nations with gene technologies.

China is now building a large gene chip manufacturing plant in Zhaoqing in Guangdong Province. The investment amounts to 250 million yuan (US$30 million).

An ambitious state plan and billions of yuan in investment have resulted in various labs which focus on gene research and development, including Beijing Genomics Institute, the National Center for Gene Research in Shanghai, and China Southern Gene Research Center in Hangzhou in East China's Zhejiang Province.

(China Daily 09/29/2001)