KUALA LUMPUR: Sunway Healthcare Group has entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with AstraZeneca, a global pharmaceutical company, focusing on collaboration in clinical trials, research, service, and implementation.
This partnership marks another collaboration between AstraZeneca and Sunway Medical Centre (SMC), aimed at improving healthcare delivery and introducing innovative solutions to tackle healthcare challenges.
"Focusing on the field of oncology and biopharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca will explore SMC as a potential site for future clinical trials, including, but not limited to, Phase I clinical trials to further expand patients' access to AstraZeneca's innovative drugs under their clinical development pipeline," it said.
Sunway Healthcare managing director (hospital and healthcare operations), Dr Khoo Chow Huat, emphasised the importance of collective efforts in developing solutions to address the increasing prevalence of non-communicable diseases like cancer and diabetes in Malaysia.
He said the efforts are aimed at preventing, diagnosing, and treating these conditions for the betterment of humanity.
"This is one of the reasons we established the Sunway Clinical Research Centre (SCRC) in 2009, which currently focuses on phase II to phase IV clinical trials and feasibility studies across a diverse spectrum of disciplines," he said.
Khoo highlighted that the SCRC has supported a total of 101 investigator-led research projects involving their own medical consultants and professionals, along with 50 industry-sponsored research projects in partnership with academic, research, medical technology, and pharmaceutical organisations.
Currently, there are 24 active research projects in the latter category.
"AstraZeneca is one of the major contributors to the industry-sponsored research in the SCRC, and we want to take this collaboration further by exploring Phase 1 clinical trials with AstraZeneca, when SMC's Phase I Clinical Trial Unit is ready in 2025—marking the first such partnership for us as well as for AstraZeneca, as far as private hospitals are concerned," he added.
AstraZeneca country president Vinod Narayanan said the partnership with Sunway Healthcare exemplifies how the company is harnessing advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
"We are exploring the use of AI for early lung cancer screening and to detect tumour markers within our cancer portfolio and considering Sunway Medical Centre as a potential site for future clinical trials.
"We hope to replicate the success of this collaboration by expanding it to include other hospitals under the Sunway Healthcare Group in the near future," he added.