Medical doctors and professors from Korea and Italy exchanged views on “personalized medicine” and other pathological issues that require bilateral cooperation, at a symposium held at the Plaza Hotel in Seoul on Tuesday.

Professor Francesco Profumo, president of Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation, presented his goal of accelerating the deployment of genomic solutions for entire sequencing populations, sharing data across institutions to make a timely diagnosis.

“One of the critical challenges in the 1000 Genome project was data compression and transfer protocols. Recent IT work on searching in compressed data or computation with compressed data may have particularly promising applications,” he said.

The other presenter in the morning session, Professor Ruggero De Maria, president of the Human Genetic Foundation, said that although precision medicine is a new clinical field, many initiatives are going on in the Italian biomedical excellence networks.

“Italy is at the frontline of precision medicine research, particularly in cancer,” he said. “The Italian network of cancer centers is running a program that will guarantee to all advanced patients nationwide a full characterization of all driver and actionable genomic alterations of their tumors,”

According to the Italian Trade Agency and the Embassy of Italy, the two countries will conclude three financial agreements this year to enhance between Korea and Italy’s Institutes of Health.

“In 2016, the pharmaceutical sector accounted for 5 percent of the total Italian exports to Korea. Korea’s pharmaceutical shipments to Italy are smaller in size, but are growing,” said Italian Ambassador Moarco della Seta in his congratulatory speech, “This afternoon, four Italian companies will meet with Korean companies and accompany them tomorrow to Bio Korea. I am confident this will strengthen between Italy and Korea in the field of medicine.”

The bilateral symposium focused its discussion on cancer and neurodegenerative disease later in the afternoon session.

Participants in the Korea-Italy Bilateral Symposium to strengthen relationships in the pharmaceutical sector pose for photographers at the Plaza Hotel, Seoul, on Tuesday

connie@docdocdoc.co.kr

<© Korea Biomedical Review, All rights reserved.>