Bridging Oceans and Ideas: AACR’s 90-Year Connection to Chinese Cancer Research
In 1935, an adolescent organization known as the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) was publishing a journal, The American Journal of Cancer, without so much as a formal headquarters. Through a joint effort of AACR, the Chemical Foundation, and the Crocker Institute for Cancer Research, the New York City office of the journal’s editor, Francis Carter Wood, MD, sent materials for publication to the Lancaster Press in Pennsylvania (which has since been converted into condos).
Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, scientists also pursued progress. In the city of Changsha, China, two physicians, P. L. Li, MD, and Chi-Shih Yang, MD, assembled their findings like so many other scientists and prepared their manuscript, “An Inquiry into the Origin of the Mixed Tumors of the Salivary Glands, with Reference to Their Embryonic Interrelationships,” for publication in The American Journal of Cancer, the forerunner journal to today’s Cancer Research.
At the time, they likely had no way of knowing that, in doing so, they were on their way to becoming the first in a long line of Chinese researchers to publish with AACR.
As 2026 draws to a close, AACR President Keith T. Flaherty, MD, FAACR, is en route to China for the Chinese Congress on Holistic Integrative Oncology (CCHIO), organized by the China Anti-Cancer Association (CACA). At an AACR-CACA joint session, Flaherty will present some of his original research on rational combination therapies as well as an overview of AACR’s recently established Asia Pacific Office, the inaugural AACR Asia Pacific Conference, and other key AACR priorities. CCHIO will also feature a symposium on cancer biology and precision oncology organized by CACA and the AACR journal Cancer Discovery.
“Our goal remains to feature early-career Chinese investigators to an international editorial audience to increase awareness of their work,” he said. Flaherty added that he’s also interested in speaking with Chinese researchers to tease out a key question of disparities in cancer outcomes: How much can be attributed to a lack of access to therapies vs. how much can be attributed to fundamental differences in biology?
“You can’t answer the second question from one country’s patients, which is why I’m adding investigators outside the United States to the group convening around it,” he said.
With AACR’s presence, this collaborative meeting represents a joint effort by organizations from two of the world’s most powerful countries to eliminate the scourge of cancer. And by auspicious coincidence, this year’s CCHIO takes place in Changsha, where the relationship between Chinese cancer researchers and AACR was first forged 91 years ago.
On such an occasion, Cancer Research Catalyst explores the first blossoming of connection between AACR and the Chinese cancer research landscape—the initial step on a long road of collaboration, innovation, and collective effort in the pursuit of a world without cancer.
Steadfast Science in Stressful Times: The Makings of AACR’s First Chinese-authored Journal Article
While the United States muddled through the Great Depression and looked on with apprehension toward the storm clouds gathering over Europe, the China of 1935 reeled from an ongoing civil war. But even as capital-H History took its course, the everyday lives of Chinese researchers in 1935 were driven by the same curiosity that drives them today.
In Changsha, Li and Yang of the Hsiang-Ya Medical College—now the Xiangya School of Medicine of Central South University—were investigating the histological features of head and neck tumors that they referred to as “mixed tumors of the salivary glands.”
In their manuscript, they detailed the structure of 25 tumor samples removed from the head and neck: 18 from the face and scalp, and seven from within the oral cavity. Most of these tumors, the authors wrote, were “small, benign, well encapsulated tumors situated either in the skin or in the subcutaneous or submucosal tissues.”
Such an analysis, according to Li and Yang, was compelled by the underdeveloped consensus in 1935 as to how such a heterogenous collection of tumors could develop. Pointing to this problem, they cited none other than one of AACR’s founders and first AACR President, James Ewing, MD, who summarized the field’s understanding as follows: that the tumors were not endothelial in origin; that none of the possible sources of all the mixed tumors satisfactorily explain their origin completely; and that cartilage structures could be excluded as a point of origin.
“The purpose of this communication is to describe some general features of these neoplastic growths,” wrote Li and Yang, “and to arrive at a probable explanation for their origin.”
Li and Yang analyzed the tumors with an eye for their histopathological features, such as whether the tumors involved glandular structures, contained epithelial pearls, showed signs of cornification, and contained a variety of cell types, among others. The tumors, though they presented with a great deal of heterogeneity, could best be grouped by whether they originated from inside the oral cavity or not, the authors wrote.
Their paper presented the histopathological analysis of the samples in tandem with the literature of the time, which reflected the already-global state of cancer research in 1935; the 66-item bibliography includes citations of American, German, Italian, and French journals.
Ultimately, Li and Yang proposed that mixed tumors of the salivary glands could be thought of as originating from different stages of embryonic development, with each stage possessing the capacity to lay the groundwork for the later development of a different tumor.
Following the publication of their paper in The American Journal of Cancer, both Li and Yang would go on to have long careers, despite the upheavals that were soon to arrive.
According to a history from Guizhou Medical University, where he would later teach as a professor of internal medicine, Yang organized the Hsiang-Ya Medical College Wartime Service Corps, which trained the Chinese army in first aid for the fight against the invading Japanese forces.
After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the history reads, Yang continued to practice medicine and serve in a leadership capacity in multiple hospitals—and he was even personally recognized by Premier Zhou Enlai as a national first-class medical expert.
For his part, Li had a well-traveled career following his stint at Hsiang-Ya Medical College.
A history published by Xi’an Jiaotong University (written about a man likely to be the same Li of the paper published in The American Journal of Cancer Research) states that Li studied pathology further in Britain from 1937 to 1939, returned to China, and worked as a professor of pathology at several universities. Later, he became the head of the Department of Pathology at Northwest Medical College in China (an appointment that led the local district court to occasionally employ Li’s services for autopsies).
The paper the two men authored in 1935 would go on to inform debate about mixed salivary gland tumors, continuing to be cited more than a decade later. Their embryonic hypothesis ultimately fell by the wayside as the understanding of cancer improved. The “mixed tumors” terminology gave way to “pleomorphic adenomas,” the most common type of salivary gland tumor, and advances in genetics have led to greater understanding of how these tumors form.
But the contributions of Li and Yang to a niche subfield paved the way for further understanding, and the connection between AACR and cancer researchers in China has endured.
A Century of Innovation: China’s Growing Role in the Cancer Research Community
Since the publication of the paper by Li and Yang in 1935, China has increasingly contributed to biomedical research writ large and cancer research in particular, especially over the past decade or so.
That progress is well-documented in two timely publications in Cancer Discovery about the state of cancer research in China, written by cancer researchers affiliated with Chinese government organizations. According to “The Landscape of National Natural Science Foundation of China-sponsored Oncology Research Funding, 2016-2025,” oncology topics have consistently dominated projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China as part of the country’s “Healthy China 2030” initiative, which aims to increase Chinese cancer patients’ five-year relative survival rate of 43.7% by 15% by 2030. The report states that in 2025, China funded basic research grants, including those devoted to solid tumors, to the tune of 7.16 billion yuan, or more than $1 billion.
The other paper from Cancer Discovery, “The Transformation of Oncology Drug Development in China: Toward a New Phase of Innovation,” points to the regulatory reform of China’s drug approval process, initiated in 2015, as a critical step in expanding the country’s capacity for investigating and approving new therapies through Chinese clinical trials—which, the authors highlight, have included focuses on targeted cancer therapies such as antibody-drug conjugates and CAR T-cell approaches.
Consistent with the sustained Chinese investment in research and development outlined by these two articles, a 2025 article from the Nature Index reported that China overtook the United States in 2024 in the publication’s measure of cancer research outlet, and according to papers from The Lancet Oncology and the New England Journal of Medicine, both total clinical trials and drug approvals have seen recent increases in China as well.
Additionally, Chinese publications have come to represent a substantial share of articles in AACR journals, especially through the 2010s and 2020s. In 2011, AACR’s journals accepted 53 Chinese-authored manuscripts for publication, but by 2025, that number had more than quadrupled to 221. The total number of Chinese-authored manuscripts accepted for publication in AACR journals is projected to exceed 300 by the end of 2026.
China’s presence is also growing at one of the world’s biggest conferences for cancer research—at the AACR Annual Meeting 2025, 16% of all clinical trials and 8% of all abstracts presented were from China. Those figures were sustained at 15.7% and 8.7%, respectively, at the AACR Annual Meeting 2026.
Such cross-pollination of cancer research between researchers in China and the United States, according to Flaherty, can be even more valuable if scientists in both countries work together on creating common standards.
“What concerns me is the prospect that we generate two large bodies of clinical data that don’t interoperate,” said Flaherty, and he added that this is especially important in an era where detailed clinical data increasingly inform and guide clinical trials and future research.
“I am hoping that we can achieve greater harmonization of our clinical and translational research efforts: common standards for biospecimen collection embedded in trials, a shared definition of adequate pharmacodynamic assessment, and data commons that let investigators pool outcomes against comparable molecular annotation,” he said. “Setting field-wide standards that travel internationally is something AACR is positioned to do.”
As he prepares for his trip, the AACR President said he believes that stateside cancer research could stand to benefit from some of the Chinese approaches, especially China’s apparatus for investigator-initiated trials (IITs). China’s IIT regulations, Flaherty said, allow scientists to pursue limited early-stage investigations of therapies without first having to obtain a sponsor for an investigational new drug application—a process that can be both long and costly.
“That matters because investigator-initiated studies are where deep translational work is most feasible. The academic investigator controls the sampling schedule and can take tissue at the time points that answer mechanistic questions, not the minimum a filing requires,” he explained.
And as part of a broader series of engagements with scientific, clinical, institutional, regulatory, and industry stakeholders across the region, representatives from AACR journals, AACR Project GENIE®, and the newly launched AACR Asia Pacific Office are joining him at CCHIO.
Today’s world might, in certain ways, be completely unrecognizable to the people of 1935. But for all that has changed, cancer research remains a global undertaking in 2026. As AACR returns to Changsha, where its connection with Chinese cancer research began, the ties of scientific discovery continue to propel not just one country but the entire globe forward toward a healthier future.
Learn more about the upcoming AACR meetings and workshops, including Frontiers in Cancer Science 2026, to be held in Singapore, and the AACR-KCA Joint Conference on Precision Medicine in Cancer, to be held in Gyeongju, Korea.
