ABSTRACT
Over the past few decades, there has been a dramatic increase of cancer incidence and mortality all over the world. According to the estimation from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), there were nearly 12.7 million new cancer cases and 7.6 million cancer deaths in 2008 worldwide [1]. With the growing ageing population and increasing adoption of cancer-causing behaviours, such as tobacco smoking, physical inactivity and obesity [2], the IARC also indicated that the incidence of cancer worldwide would grow by 75 per cent by the year 2030 and nearly double in some developing countries [3]. Although North America had the highest cancer incidence rate in the world, Eastern Asia had the largest amount of new cases (3.7 million in 2008) [3, 4]. The burden of cancer continues to increase in this region, and in this century, cancer becomes the major cause of death in many Asian countries [5].
