The parties have signed a 5-year collaboration agreement. Focus will be on recruitment of PhD students to cancer research at Lund University, exchange of physicians within oncology between Skåne University Hospital and TMUCIH, as well as joint research projects.

One of the first projects, is led by Prof. Sara Ek and Lecturer Dr Anna Gerdtsson at the Department of Immunotechnology. The research focus is early detection of ovarian and pancreatic cancer by serum-based diagnostics and the use of spatial analysis of the tumor micro-environment to identify novel strategies for cancer therapy.

TMUCIH and CREATE Health have initiated their collaboration already in 2012 when representatives for Region Skåne and LU signed the agreement on site in Tianjin during a visit. Since then, numerous bilateral exchanges have taken place. Anna Gerdtsson, lead scientist in the collaborative project, worked on site in Tianjin during 2016 where she successfully completed the practical part of the project, which was later published in Molecular Oncology.

Since 2015, TMUCIH is one of the two national cancer centres in China, the other being Beijing University. Thus, CREATE Health rates the renewed agreement as a strategically important opportunity for increased international collaboration. Prof. Carl Borrebaeck, director of CREATE Health, sees the environment at Medicon Village with co-localization of industry and the new infrastructure SpatialOmics@LU, which is currently established at Immunotechnology, as important assets in being an attractive partner to TMUCIH for continued collaboration.