Speaker: Prof. Kari Hemminki
Title: Second Primary Cancer: New Epidemic!
Time: Monday, April 29, 2019, 10:50am
Location: 401-1412,Dushu Lake campus
Hosted by: Prof. Xiaochen Shu
Dr. KariHemminki is a Professor of Molecular GeneticEpidemiology at German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)and University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
He received his M.Ddegree in Medicine and Ph.D. degree in Medical biochemistry from University of Helsinki, Finland in 1973. He onceworked at many famous institutes, such as Finnish Institute ofOccupational Health (FIOH) in Finland, Karolinska Institute and Lund University inSweden, and GermanCancer Research Center (DKFZ) and Universityof Heidelberg in Germany andso on.
The themes of research for Kari Hemminki were set atKarolinska Institute and were continued at DKFZ since his move in 2003.Epidemiology of familial cancer was based on the Swedish Family-Cancer Databasethat KH had established and kept on updating biannually. The Database is thelargest dataset of its kind in the world and it has produced reliable familialrisk estimates for essentially all cancers. Importantly, as the Swedishfamilial links are nationally registered all familial cancers can be covered inan unbiased manner; moreover, as all cancer diagnoses originate from thenational cancer registry the accuracy is high. The complementary line ofresearch for KH was also established already in Sweden: germline genetics of cancer,i.e., understanding genetic basis of familial clustering of cancer. The mainapproach from 2005 onwards was the genome-wide association study (GWAS). Theresults have been particularly eminent in hematological malignancies, includingmultiple myeloma, Hodgkin lymphoma and childhood leukemia; for the two firstmalignancies KH’s collaborative team has described essentially all thegenetic risk loci known to-date. Parallel with the GWAS approach the KH teamhas started to use exome and whole genome sequencing. It was initially appliedin a large melanoma family in which a highly penetrant TERT promoter mutationat the binding site of transcription factors Ets/TCF was described in a seminalpaper in Science (Horn et al 2013). The germline mutations are very rare butsomatic TERT promoter mutations that we described in the same paper are commonin many cancers; in melanoma, bladder cancer and glioma they are the mostcommon somatic mutations known. They are associated with clinical andprognostic parameters of many cancers, providing data to individualizedtranslational genomics. Whole genome sequencing is currently applied to cancerfamilies in search of novel predisposing genes.
His Scientific activity is covering over 1300 papers. 96of them have impact factors approximately equal to or greater than 10 mainlyincluding The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Science, and Naturegenetics as well. According to the Clarivate Web of Science KH has received35.000 citations (without self-citations). The h-index is 84.
