According to the list of newly elected members for 2026 released by the U.S. National Academy of Medicine (NAM) on the 19th local time, Academician Jun Ma of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chair of the Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma Committee of the Chinese Anti-Cancer Association, and Executive Vice President of Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, has been elected to the NAM. He is the only scholar from China among the international members elected this year.In its citation accompanying the election, the NAM recognized Professor Ma for leading his team in pioneering immunochemoradiotherapy regimens that enhance treatment efficacy and developing new strategies for radiotherapy with reduced toxicity, thereby establishing the modern standard-of-care treatment framework for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). This body of research has increased the five-year survival rate of Chinese patients with NPC from approximately 44% to 56%, extending patients’ lives while continually improving their quality of survival.
For many years, conventional treatment approaches for NPC have had limitations, leaving some patients vulnerable to recurrence and metastasis. Academician Ma and his team have directly addressed these unmet clinical needs through sustained efforts to identify more effective treatment strategies.
Academician Ma has proposed several innovative chemotherapy strategies, including gemcitabine plus cisplatin (GP) and metronomic capecitabine chemotherapy. These approaches have challenged traditional treatment paradigms and significantly improved patient outcomes. He has also pioneered new directions in immunotherapy by proposing the addition of PD-1 inhibitors to chemoradiotherapy for NPC, an innovative strategy designed to relieve immune suppression and amplify antitumor immune responses.
In recent years, Academician Ma’s team has moved beyond the traditional focus on tumor eradication alone, making reduced treatment burden and high-quality survival central goals of therapy. His team refined risk stratification according to NPC stage to establish a scientific basis for treatment tailored to individual risk levels. Building on this work, they proposed an innovative strategy to omit concurrent chemotherapy in low-risk patients.
The team has also analyzed large volumes of imaging data to map the progression and risk patterns of NPC, developing individualized precision strategies to reduce toxicity by narrowing radiotherapy treatment fields. These approaches have reduced long-term radiotherapy-related adverse effects while maintaining curative efficacy.
Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center currently treats more patients with NPC than any other institution worldwide. In the global NPC academic rankings compiled by the European organization Expertscape, Sun Yat-sen University ranks first. The center has become an international hub for the clinical diagnosis, treatment, and research of NPC.
Election to the U.S. National Academy of Medicine is a lifetime honor. Members are elected by existing NAM members. Each year, no more than 90 regular members and 10 international members are elected. The distinction recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to medicine, public health, health policy, biomedical research, and related fields.
