Professorship to focus on gynecological cancers

Friends and family of a late Hong Kong physician have donated $ 3 million to create a new University of B. C. professorship to help find new ways of detecting and treating ovarian and other gynecological cancers.

Dr. David G. Huntsman, a professor in UBC’S department of pathology and laboratory medicine and a consulting pathologist at Vancouver General Hospital, will be the first person to hold the Dr. Chew Wei memorial professorship.

In a news release issued by the university, Huntsman said it is a “great honour” to receive the inaugural professorship.

“The professorship will enable me to dedicate more time to working with the [ Ovarian Cancer Research Program of B. C.] team to find solutions for ovarian and other gynecological cancers,” said Huntsman, who has researched methods of earlier diagnosis and identified the major genetic mutations in two types of ovarian cancer.

“Without the generosity of Dr. Chew’s family and friends, and the women who donate their tumours for study, much of our research would not be possible.”

Chew practised obstetrics and gynecology for nearly 40 years in Hong Kong and grew increasingly dismayed by the prognosis for patients who developed ovarian cancer, according to the release.

He retired to Vancouver in 1988 and died in 2009.