Lung Cancer Network Malaysia Confers Inaugural World Cancer Day Awards on Two Eminent Senior Professors
Lung Cancer Network Malaysia recently conferred the Society’s inaugural World Cancer Day (WCD) award on two distinguished senior doctors. Established in 2019, LCNM is a not-for-profit disease-centric NGO that seeks to improve lung cancer care and outcomes in Malaysia through greater awareness, education, advocacy and research. The fight against lung cancer requires a multi-pronged approach with multi-stakeholder collaboration, aptly reflected by the Society’s tagline ‘conquering lung cancer together’.
According to LCNM founding president Professor Anand Sachithanandan, the Society has initiated a prestigious WCD award to recognize and honour outstanding individuals or organizations who have made a significant contribution towards improving lung cancer care and outcomes in Malaysia.
According to the LCNM website, eligible recipients may include inspiring patient advocates and caregivers, regulators and policymakers, researchers, health media journalists, NGOs, allied healthcare providers, industry leaders or corporate institutions, academics, community doctors and hospital clinicians. A maximum of two WCD awards will be presented annually, each February, in conjunction with World Cancer Day. However, the award may not be presented some years if there are no worthy recipients.
Prof Sachithanandan recently announced the first two recipients of the inaugural WCD awards for 2025 are senior respected researchers cum doctors; Emeritus Professor Dr Liam Chong Kin, an eminent respiratory physician at University Malaya and Professor Dr Pathmanathan Rajadurai, a renowned histopathologist at the Subang Jaya Medical Centre. The Society’s co-founders Prof Sachithanandan, a cardiothoracic surgeon and Dr Tho Lye Mun, an oncologist (and current LCNM president), presented the awards separately to the duo.
“Professor CK Liam and Professor Pathmanathan have made highly impactful contributions over several decades to advance our understanding of lung cancer locally and in doing so, both have contributed significantly towards improving clinical outcomes here” said Prof Sachithanandan. “Research aside, they have trained and mentored many junior doctors over the years. Chest physicians trained by Prof Liam not only diagnose but also treat lung cancer. As for Prof Pathma, his laboratory is the first in the region to introduce tumour genomic molecular profiling with next generation sequencing which has heralded the dawn of precision diagnostics and personalised lung cancer treatments here. For these reasons LCNM is delighted to recognise and honour their seminal work” he added.
According to Dr Tho, Prof Liam is responsible for bringing various clinical trials to Malaysia that paved the way for use of oral targeted therapies here.
Professor Dr Liam Chong Kin
A graduate of University Malaya (Class of 1980), Professor Liam Chong Kin is widely acknowledged as one of the pioneers instrumental in setting up the Internal Medicine masters postgraduate training programme and helping to develop respiratory medicine into a now thriving sub-specialty in Malaysia. Tuberculosis medicine was a key clinical focus in the first half of his lengthy career before he turned his interest towards improving care for patients diagnosed with lung cancer. A prolific writer and keen researcher with over 200 publications in various scientific journals, Prof Liam has been listed among the World’s Top 2% of Scientists in 2022, 2023 and 2024 by United States-based Stanford University. He remains a much-sought-after speaker in the country and Southeast Asia region for various respiratory disorders.
A recipient of multiple excellence service awards from the Faculty of Medicine at University Malaya, Prof Liam was once the Deputy Dean in charge of postgraduate training and a member of the varsity Senate. He remains actively involved in various professional societies having previously served as the Head of the Lung Cancer Assembly (2016-2019) at the Asian Pacific Society of Respirology and being co-chair of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) Asia Pacific Lung Cancer conference in 2014. He was President of the Malaysian Thoracic Society (2001-2009) and one of the founders of the Lung foundation of Malaysia in which he still serves as a Trustee. Following retirement, Prof Liam continues to serve the university as an Honorary Professor and is the coordinator of the Respiratory Sciences Block in the undergraduate MBBS programme. He was conferred Emeritus Professorship by University Malaya in 2022 in recognition of his immense contributions to the scientific community.
Prof Pathmanathan Rajadurai
A graduate of University of Malaya medical school (Class of 1978) with a distinction in Pathology, Professor Pathmanathan subsequently scored a distinction for his Master of Pathology and was similarly awarded a distinction for his doctoral thesis on the Molecular Pathology of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma. He served as a lecturer, associate professor and then full professor of pathology and consultant histopathologist at University Hospital (1982-1998) including a stint as Deputy Dean of Postgraduate Affairs before leaving his alma mater for private practice in 1998. He is currently Senior Consultant Pathologist and Laboratory Director at the Subang Jaya Medical Centre.
A prolific researcher with more than 270 scientific publications in international and peer-reviewed journals, Prof Pathma currently holds various concurrent academic appointments including Professor of Anatomical Pathology in the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine, Monash University (Sunway Campus, Kuala Lumpur) and is Honorary Professor of Pathology at the University of Malaya. He is an examiner in pathology for both the local Master’s degree and the Royal College of Pathologists, Australasia fellowship.
A recipient of numerous international fellowships, Prof Pathma was recently made an international fellow of the College of American Pathologists (CAP). He serves as advisor and consultant for international organizations such as the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and World Health Organization, in addition to being a valued advisory board member of many national and international multinational diagnostics and pharmaceutical companies. He remains a frequent sought-after speaker at local and international scientific meetings. His current research areas of interest include the molecular pathology of cancers, telepathology and digital imaging.
