[Sportschosun Reporter Jang Jong-ho] Professor Min Jeong-jun of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at Chonnam National University Hwasun Hospital has been named the world’s most prolific researcher in the field of bacteria-mediated cancer therapy. He was also invited as the first speaker for the opening session of the Gordon Research Conference, the world’s most prestigious forum in the field, and delivered a keynote lecture under the theme "Microbes as Therapeutics," once again proving his international research competitiveness.
Researchers at the University of Texas recently published a paper in the international journal Drug Discovery Today, which has an impact factor of 8.7, titled "A global bibliometric and visualized analysis of bacteria-mediated cancer therapy." The study analyzed 1,758 papers on bacteria-mediated cancer therapy published from 2012 to 2021 and evaluated research productivity and influence by country, institution, and researcher. It was the first quantitative analysis of global research trends and impact in this field.
According to the analysis, Professor Min published 19 papers during the period, making him the most productive researcher in the world. Those papers had been cited 381 times at the time of the analysis, underscoring the impact of his work.
In the institutional analysis, Chonnam National University (CNU) ranked second in the world with 33 research outputs, following the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Its papers received 807 citations in total. The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego), Harvard University, and Zhejiang University followed.
Professor Min’s team has been developing a platform for diagnosing and treating cancer by using the tendency of attenuated Salmonella to selectively accumulate in tumors rather than normal tissue. After establishing a technology to track the movement of bacteria in the body and tumor growth using molecular imaging, the team has continued research into next-generation therapies that use genetic engineering to enable bacteria to produce anticancer proteins and immune-activating substances inside tumors, directly attacking the cancer and inducing an antitumor immune response.
As bacterial therapeutics are drawing attention as next-generation medicines, the Gordon Research Conference adopted "Microbes as Therapeutics" as an independent theme this year. The conference, which will be held from Aug. 2 to 7 at Bates College in Maine, will bring together leading researchers from around the world to share the latest findings in microbial engineering for the treatment of cancer and other intractable diseases.
Professor Min has been invited as the first speaker in the opening-day session titled "Bacterial Cancer Therapies" and is scheduled to deliver a keynote lecture on "Bacterial Engineering for Targeted Cancer Immunotherapy."
The achievement is being seen as a meaningful recognition of the research results and international standing he has built in the field of bacteria-based cancer therapy.
Professor Min said, "This achievement is the result of the research capabilities that the medical, microbiology, immunology, nuclear medicine, molecular imaging, and synthetic biology teams at Chonnam National University have built through long-term collaboration, and it has been recognized internationally. At a conference where researchers from around the world gather, I will share our research achievements and vision, and I will work even harder to develop next-generation bacterial anticancer drugs that connect accumulated basic research to actual patient treatment."
Jang Jong-ho, bellho@sportschosun.com
This article has been translated by GripLabs Mingo AI.
