Korea University said Thursday that its K-Master Cancer Precision Medicine Diagnosis & Treatment Enterprise (K-Master) had analyzed more than 1,000 gene samples of local cancer patients as of Sep. 19.

The K-Master project, which enrolled its first patient on Oct. 30, 2017, registers cancer patients through 49 clinical trial institutes.

The project receives cancer tissue and liquid biopsy samples from the institutions and conducts a cancer dielectric profiling by using the FIRST cancer panel of Seoul National University, Samsung Genome Lab’s CancerSCAN and Macrogen’s Axen liquid biopsy panel, to find the perfect target immunotherapy clinical trial for a patient.

Of the cancer patients enrolled in the K-MASTER project, 34 percent of the patient had colon cancer, 15 percent breast cancer, 10 percent lung cancers, 7 percent sarcoma, 5 percent urothelial cancer, 4 percent cholangiocarcinoma, 3 percent liver and ovarian cancer and 2 percent uterine cancer.

“The accumulated large-scale cancer genetic information will be constructed into an integrated platform along with clinical trial information,” said Professor Kim Youl-hong, head of K-Master Enterprise. “The platform will allow us to develop a diagnostic method or a cancer treatment based on precision medicine.”

The team will try to enroll as many patients in clinical trials as possible to increase the accessibility of cancer diagnosis and treatment for domestic patients, he added.