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The Chief Operating Officer of King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre (KFSH&RC) in Riyadh, Dr. Saleh Almofada, inaugurated the activities for the launch of 18th annual research report at the King Salman Lecture Hall at the KFSH&RC’s premises.

In his opening remarks, Dr. Almofada highlighted the importance of the research projects undertaken by the Research Center that made a substantive contribution in the medical domain helping in the effective diagnosis and treatment of patients. Expressing his delight at the achievements of KFSH&RC-Riyadh, he pointed out that the research papers published dealt with areas like cancer, heart and genetic diseases, and organs transplantation.

Dr. Khalid Abu Khabar, Deputy Executive Director of the Research Centre at KFSH&RC-Riyadh, said that during 2017, as many as 510 research papers were published in the prestigious international journals. The research papers were related to cancer, internal medicine, and genetic, heart, blood, and neurological diseases. He stressed that the research findings were expected to contribute not only to the enhanced knowledge of pathogens but could also lead to new treatment methods, adding that some of these studies have helped find out how cancer cells grow and invade other tissues.

Dr. Abu Khabar explained that in 2017 four patent applications were submitted to patent offices in America, Europe, and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Two patents were granted by the US for the discovery of a "probe to detect and treat brain damage" and discovery of a "luminous system to determine cell response to viruses."

He pointed out that the statistical analysis of the research conducted since 1996, using the Institute for Scientific Information database, showed that the average number of citation (i.e., the number of citations for each research paper published by KFSH&RC-Riyadh) was 20, way above the global average of 14 citations, which is closer to the US average of 24 citations for each research published from the US.