In this case, two young scientists, Holger Willenbring and Xin Chen, were trying to study a deadly, and fairly common, form of liver cancer called hepatocellular carcinoma.

FORBES: Cells Get a Makeover, Cancer Follows: A Path to New Therapies (and a Warning to Stem Cell Alchemists)

Here, the focus is on studying the genetics of diseases that particularly afflict the Chinese population, such as hepatocellular carcinoma, a form of liver cancer.

ECONOMIST: Chinese biotechnology

Earlier last year Antonio Giorgio, and his colleagues at the Cotugno Hospital for Infectious Diseases in Naples, published a paper in the American Journal of Roentgenology describing their success in using radio waves, rather than laser light, to treat hepatocellular carcinoma, another form of liver cancer and one that is among the deadliest in the world.

ECONOMIST: Thermal treatments of cancer are remarkably effective