New Research Scholar Jeong Yun (John) Yang to Study Benefits of Treating H. Pylori to Lower Gastric Cancer Risk
In South Korea, where Dr. Jeong Yun (John) Yang was born, there is high prevalence of the stomach infection Helicobacter pylori, which is known to cause gastric cancer. Studies from South Korea showed that testing and treating for H. pylori reduces the risk of gastric cancer and peptic ulcer disease. Yang, in his last year as a T32 fellow of the Gastroenterology Fellowship at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, has long wondered: Could routine testing for H. pylori in the United States help bring down rates of gastric cancer here, as well?
Yang will spend the next three years trying to answer that question as the fifth recipient of The American Gastroenterology Association–Gastric Cancer Foundation Ben Feinstein Memorial Research Scholar Award in Gastric Cancer. The grant provides $100,000 per year for three years to young scientists in the field of gastric cancer research.
H. Pylori, which affects an estimated half the world’s population, is a known risk factor for gastric cancer, but most patients are not aware they have the infection because it often does not produces symptoms. Yang’s project is designed to quantify the benefits and risks of testing for H. pylori and treating the infection. His plan is to construct a mathematical model to represent the broad US population, which he’ll use to simulate the trajectory of H. pylori, as well as potential outcomes of routine screening and treatment. He will then leverage machine learning methods to analyze genomic and clinical data from thousands of H. pylori patients stored in large databases, including one maintained by the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us research program, to predict which H. pylori patients face a high risk of developing gastric cancer or peptic ulcers. By doing so, he envisions constructing a personalized screening platform to help patients who would benefit from intervention.
“Hopefully this project will help us determine whether it makes sense to start screening the US population for H. pylori,” Yang said. “Right now, only people with symptoms are screened. My project considers whether that’s too late. We are missing silent cases and need to get ahead of these infections so we can prevent bad outcomes.”
Yang, who received his medical degree from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, has been interested in cancer research since high school, when he worked in a lab at Stony Brook University in Long Island. He was drawn to gastric cancer research while working in a lab at Mount Sinai, where he picked up skills in coding and statistical analysis. At the same time, he kept hearing stories from family and friends back in South Korea about how early detection strategies had led to successful outcomes in people they knew who were treated for gastric cancer.
Yang says he’s grateful to the American Gastroenterology Association and Gastric Cancer Foundation for supporting his work.
“Longstanding, invisible causes of cancer like H. pylori are often ignored. Now because of the generosity of this grant, we can really address this,” he said. “I believe that through research, we will be able to shift the gastric cancer experience in the United States, starting with prevention and early detection.”
Learn more about the AGA–Gastric Cancer Foundation Ben Feinstein Memorial Research Scholar Award in Gastric Cancer >>
