AMC Cancer Institute pioneers multidisciplinary cancer treatment

[Courtesy of AMC]

South Korea’s Asan Medical Center (AMC) Cancer Institute came in sixth in the recent “World’s Best Specialized Hospitals 2024” global rankings conducted by Newsweek, a U.S. weekly news magazine. The achievement places AMC Cancer Institute alongside world-renowned medical institutions in the United States, including Mayo Clinic-Rochester, Harvard Medical School’s Massachusetts General Hospital, Cleveland Clinic, and Johns Hopkins Hospital.

AMC Cancer Institute comprises 16 sub-centers that are disease-specific and offers customized cancer treatment via its Center for Personalized Cancer Medicine. The institute’s continued efforts to elevate cancer treatment standards have been recognized both domestically and internationally, as reflected in the Newsweek ranking.

“Equipped with a virtuous cycle system of abundant clinical experience, excellent treatment results, and foundational cancer research, AMC Cancer Institute has continuously improved its performance in cancer treatment,” according to Professor Kim Tae-won, the institute’s president. “We will continue to leap forward by engaging in cancer treatment even further.”

AMC Cancer Institute was founded in 2006 as Korea’s first multidisciplinary cancer care center, where it initiated its comprehensive approach to cancer treatment. A multidisciplinary clinic is a medical service where specialists from diverse departments gather to provide personalized treatment for cancer patients from diagnosis to surgery.

At AMC Cancer Institute, specialists in diagnostic, surgical, medical, and radiation oncology collaborate to develop individualized care plans for each patient. The number of multidisciplinary cancer care cases at the institute increased from 5,472 in 2021 to 6,189 in 2022, or approximately 30 percent of cases in Korea.

AMC Cancer Institute treats more than one million cancer patients annually, with a total of 1.12 million cancer patients visiting the institute in 2022 compared to 1.1 million in 2021 and 2020. It also performs an average of approximately 20,000 cancer surgeries annually, the highest number in Korea. In 2022, the institute performed 22,354 cancer surgeries, 218,676 chemotherapy and 113,430 radiotherapy treatments, 5,232 next-generation sequencing (NGS) genetic tests, and 529 clinical trials. Additionally, the medical specialists at the Institute published 494 papers in the same year, with 36 of these papers published in journals with an impact factor of 20 or above, including The Lancet Oncology and JAMA Oncology which are considered among the world’s top academic journals in clinical oncology.

AMC Cancer Institute also implemented a digital pathology system in 2022, enabling the complete digitalization of all analog pathology activities. The transition aimed to maximize the efficiency of pathological diagnosis and ultimately deliver customized, precision medical services to each patient. The institute plans to scan 900,000 slides a year using the digital pathology system, which is the world’s largest capacity for processing pathological data.

In 2022, AMC Cancer Institute opened the CAR T-Cell Therapy Center, which specializes in CAR T (chimeric antigen receptor T cell) therapy. CAR T therapy involves extracting a patient’s immune cells (T-cells) and engineering them to express chimeric antigen receptors that react to certain cancer cells, after which the cells are infused back into the patient to destroy the cancerous cells. The center was created through collaboration among different departments, including the intensive care unit (ICU) as well as the neurology and infectious diseases departments. In the same year, the CAR T-cell Therapy Center was successful in treating a baby patient (female, 18 months) who had relapsed B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

In 2023, the Institute opened the Theranostics Center with an aim to enhance the diagnosis and treatment of neuroendocrine tumors and prostate cancer, as well as develop new treatment methods to improve the care of various refractory cancer patients. Theranostics, a portmanteau of “therapeutics” and “diagnostics,” represents a future-oriented technology that provides personalized medical care in line with a patient’s individual characteristics.

Through a multidisciplinary integrated treatment program, medical specialists from various departments, including nuclear medicine, urology, oncology, radiology, and pathology, work together as a team to find and provide the optimal treatment method for each patient‘s individual situation and needs.