As Hong Kong moves towards implementing landmark legislation to protect people’s end-of-life care wishes, a research team at the LKS Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed) has developed and tested a pioneering tool to improve crucial conversations behind those decisions.

The ‘Advance Care Planning Communication Assessment Tool’ (ACP-CAT) – validated for the first time in real-world clinical settings – was used to assess 137 actual medical consultations facilitating advance care planning. The study uncovered serious gaps in current communication practices among doctors, patients and family members, and offers a roadmap for improvement. The findings were published in Palliative Medicine.

Kyoto, Japan -- Cell and gene therapies, or CGT, have come a long way since they were first introduced. In the last few decades, both cell therapy -- the transplantation of living cells -- and gene therapy -- the use of genetic material to modify cell functions -- have been increasingly incorporated into clinical practice.

Various challenges and advances have propelled the use of CGT in innovative treatments for diseases that had otherwise proven difficult to conquer. Yet progress has been uneven across different therapies and regions. To accelerate CGT innovation and improve access, it is essential to take a comprehensive look at past research achievements and qualitatively evaluate relevant factors.

These challenges motivated a team of researchers at Kyoto University to take a hard look at past data and assess the current standing of cell and gene therapies in cooperation with Arthur D. Little Japan. Using the PubMed and OpenAlex databases, the team accessed over 160,000 papers related to CGT published between 1989 and 2023. They then conducted a bibliometric analysis of the historical development of these therapies, including contributions by region.