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Dr Katie Meehan, School of Biomedical Sciences, recently returned from a trip to Seoul with encouraging prospects of pilot research programs studying the link between Indigenous ancestry and its impact on breast cancer outcomes and the role of the immune system in response to head and neck cancer therapy.

Dr Meehan was in Seoul in September attending the second SKKU-UWA Partnership Forum which is held between Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University and UWA. It aims to build tangible links between Australia and Korea to identify potential synergies for teaching and research collaborations and to explore opportunities for funding joint research between the two institutions.

While there, Dr Meehan attended a round table workshop with Professor Woong-yang Park, Director of the Samsung Genome Institute and scientists from his lab. As a result of the discussions it was established that both universities had a strong interest in breast cancer research in Indigenous women.

“SKKU has studies of women of Saudi and Asian descent and the important role ancestry appears to play in the outcome of breast cancer patients,” Dr Meehan said.

“Although in its infancy, we are excited to begin generating pilot data for grants that we will apply for together to assist in funding this important research,” Dr Meehan concluded.

The SKKU-UWA Partnership Forums are partly funded by a grant from the Australia-Korea Foundation. (Chief Investigators: Dr Jo Elfving-Hwang, Mr Iain Watt, Professor Wendy Erber, Professor Ian MacArthur and Professor Len Collard).

Media references

Dr Katie Meehan (UWA Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences) +61 8 6457 2295