COFM 60th Anniversary Celebration 2008

: Launch of Dendrobium COFM :: MPH Night :: Open House :: Symposium :: Celebratory Dinner :

Breast Cancer Symposium

The Changing Epidemiology of Breast Cancer

11 August 2008, Monday, 8:30am-2.00pm

CeLS Auditorium, Centre for Life Sciences, Life Sciences

Institute (LSI), NUS

As breast cancer affects women of all races and knows no boundaries, it is assuring to know that the study of this disease has been a staple of the Centre for Molecular Epidemiology (CME) - a spin off from COFM's Chronic Disease Research Programme.

Celebrating COFM's 60th Anniversary, as well as CME's research efforts on breast cancer since January 2003, ten speakers from a variety of Singapore biomedical institutions, and from Europe , presented our work and

results. Over 150 people from a wide variety of backgrounds came to mingle and to hear these 10 speakers share new findings on the estrogen metabolism of breast cancer, genetic diagnosis of this disease in Finland, the protective factor of soy, mammographic density as a risk factor - automated methods of assessing mammographic density, as well as to get an update on the trends in breast cancer in Singapore and Sweden, before the symposium closed with an LSI Distinguished Speaker Lecture on, "The Changing

Prof Ong Choon Nam, Prof Per Hall and Prof Chia Kee Seng, Director, CME

Epidemiology of Breast Cancer" by Prof Per Hall, Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institute, Sweden.

The CeLS Auditorium was filled to overflowing with lay people, cancer survivors, researchers, clinicians and public health administrators at this half-day symposium where they were updated on:

Trends in breast cancer incidence, mortality and survival
Genes and breast cancer
Risk factors and mammography

Assoc Prof Heli Nevanlinna & Prof Per Hall

It was organized by the Centre for Molecular Epidemiology (CME) in conjunction with the 60^th Anniversary celebrations of the Department of Community, Occupation and Family Medicine (COFM), from which CME spun off in April 2002 from COFM's Chronic Disease Research Programme.

Most of the work presented at the symposium was made possible by a generous donation from an anonymous donor in 2005.

The symposium was supported by Life Sciences Institute (LSI) , Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) , Division of Graduate Medical Studies (DGMS), and Cancer Research Centre of Excellence (Cancer RCE), NUS, and the news covered by 2 radio stations (93.8Live & Capital 95.8FM), 6 television stations (Channel 5 News, Channel NewsAsia, Channel 8 News, Channel U News, Suria and Vasentham Central) and 6 newspapers.

Please click here for programme / brochure and here for a selection of the speakers' slide presentations.

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