Dr James Chih–Hsin Yang

Dr. James Chih-Hsin Yang
Director, Graduate Institute of Oncology
Director, Department of Oncology, National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH)

Dr. James Chih-Hsin Yang is currently the Director and Professor of Graduate Institute of Oncology at the National Taiwan University (NTU). He is also the director of the Department of Oncology at the National Taiwan University Hospital. He has been a staff member in the Department of Oncology at the University Hospital since 1995. Dr. Yang received his MD from NTU in 1986 and completed his internal medicine residency at the NTU Hospital. Between 1992 and 1995, he undertook medical oncology fellowship training at the National Cancer Institute at Bethesda, Maryland. He completed his PhD degree between 1996 and 2000 at the Graduate Institute of Clinical Medicine, NTU.

Dr. Yang’s research focuses on lung cancer treatment and the mechanism of multidrug resistance of chemotherapy or targeted therapy. His basic research work includes molecular mechanisms of resistance and reversal of resistance to chemotherapeutic agents and tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Dr. Yang is a leader in lung cancer clinical studies, especially in the development of epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR TKI). He and other Asian investigators have established EGFR TKI as the front line treatment for lung cancer patients with EGFR mutation (IPASS). He is also the global principal investigator of several pivotal trials that led to the global approval of a second generation EGFR TKI, afatinib (LUX-LUNG 1, 2 &3). An area of active research is now focused on the development of third generation EGFR TKIs and Dr. Yang has contributed to the approval of osimertinib.

Dr. Yang has published more than 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals. He served on the editorial board of Annals of Oncology and Lung Cancer and is the current associate editor of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology and Nature Scientific Report. He received the 2nd Kobayashi Foundation Cancer Research Award in Asian Clinical Oncology Society in 2012, and the distinguished research award of National Science Council, Taiwan from 2012-2015 and distinguished research award of Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan from 2016-2018. He is also the recipient of the TECO award for biotechnology in 2015.