Recently, the team of Professor Wu Shixiu and Professor Xie Congying from the oncology discipline group of our hospital published a research paper titled “Tracking the evolution of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma under dynamic immune selection by multi-omics sequencing” in the international leading journal Nature Communications. The Second Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University is the first affiliation unit of the paper.

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is a common malignant tumor worldwide. Currently, the main challenges facing diagnosis and treatment are intra- and inter-tumoral tissue heterogeneity and molecular heterogeneity. Although many large-scale sequencing studies have established the genomic landscape of ESCC, predicting clinical survival of ESCC patients based on genetic or molecular features remains difficult.

In clinical practice, ESCC tumors are usually resistant to radiotherapy and chemotherapy, leading to poor overall prognosis of patients with a five-year survival rate of less than 20%. Therefore, it is of great significance to further explore the genomic information on ESCC to guide individualized treatment. This research found that ongoing chromosomal instability may cause genomic, epigenomic, and transcriptomic intratumoral heterogeneity (ITH). Different levels of immune infiltration in different regions of the same tumor revealed the genetic mechanisms of tumor antigen evasion under distinct selection pressure from the different immune microenvironments. This finding provides an avenue for dissecting the multi-omics level of ITH in ESCC, which drives breakthroughs in the clinical therapy for ESCC. In the same issue of the journal, Professor Lin at the University of Southern California published a comment on this paper, noting that the study has addressed several key issues at the genomic and epigenomic levels of esophageal cancer.

Guided by the hospital’s discipline development strategy of “2+2 with 3”, the oncology discipline group has achieved rapid development in recent years. With high-end instruments and equipment such as PET-CT, SPECT, linear accelerator, and breach-loading therapy machine, it has established the first radionuclide therapy ward and the first phase I clinical trial ward for oncology in southern Zhejiang, as well as several high-level research platforms such as the national clinical trial base for tumor drugs, the national standardized training base for radiation oncology, the provincial engineering research center for technological innovation and application of intelligent radiotherapy, the provincial international cooperation base for tumor translational research, the international joint laboratory for precision diagnosis and treatment of chest tumor, and the provincial key laboratory of integrated traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine treatment for gynecologic tumors.

Expert introduction:

Dr. Wu Shixiu is a chief physician, professor, and PH.D. supervisor at the Radiation and Medical Oncology Department of the Second Affiliated Hospital.

He is a member of the Radiology Oncology Treatment Branch of the Chinese Medical Association, member of the Radiobiology Group of the Radiology Oncology Treatment Branch of the Chinese Medical Association, deputy group leader of the Immunotherapy Group of the Radiology Oncology Treatment Branch of the Chinese Medical Association, standing committee member of the Esophageal Cancer Expert Committee of the Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology, member of the Radiology Oncology Committee of the Chinese Research Hospital Association, member of the Tumor Radiotherapy Group of the Nutritional Oncology and Supportive Treatment Committee of the China Anti-Cancer Association and deputy group leader of the Chinese Tumor Radiotherapy Nutrition Expert Committee, director of the China Anti-Cancer Association, member of the Radiation Nutrition Group of the Nutritional Oncology Committee of the China Anti-Cancer Association, and deputy chairman of the First Integrated Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine Oncology Committee of the China Anti-Cancer Association.