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Chinese, Irish, Japanese win Nobel medicine prize

A lot of Asian won Nobel prize over the years, unless you don't count Japanese Asian

Hideki Yukawa (Japanese) won the 1949 prize for Physics, he was born, bred and credit for his work in Japan.

Chen-Ning Yang (Chinese American) Tsung-Dao Lee (Chinese American) Samuel C. C. Ting (Chinese American), Makoto Kobayashi (Japanese), Toshihide Maskawa (Japanese) Yoichiro Nambu (Japanese Born American) Daniel C. Tsui (Hong Kong American) Charles K. Kao (Chinese born British American), Isamu Akasaki (Japanese), Hiroshi Amano (Japanese), Shuji Nakamura (Japanese born American) also won the Nobel Prize in Physics

I am too tire to list those who have won the Nobel Prize of Chemistry and Medicine You can find them yourselves

List of Nobel laureates - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Let me rephrase it to.

Finally, we Asians of the developing world, are able to win a Nobel while studying and working in our own country!
 
First Nobel prize for Chinese medicine
Tu Youyou, 84, used traditional herbal medicine to help find a cure for Malaria

Urban-Lendahl-Secr_3463778b.jpg

Urban Lendahl (R), Secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, addresses a press conference of the Nobel Committee to announce the winners of the 2015 Nobel Medicine Prize at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm Photo: AFP/Getty
By Reuters 11:36AM BST 05 Oct 2015

Three scientists from Ireland, Japan and China won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries that helped doctors fight malaria and infections caused by roundworm parasites.

The Nobel judges in Stockholm awarded the prestigious prize to Irish-born William Campbell, Satoshi Omura and of Japan and Tu Youyou - the first ever Chinese medicine laureate.


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The portraits of the winners of the Nobel Medicine Prize 2015 (L-R) Irish-born William Campbell, Satoshi Omura of Japan and China's Youyou Tu are displayed on a screen Photo: AFP/Getty

Campbell and Omura were cited for discovering a drug that has helped lower the incidence of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, two diseases caused by parasitic worms.

• How the Nobel Prize has favoured white western men for more than 100 years

Tu discovered a drug that has helped significantly reduce the mortality rates of malaria patients.

Nobel_medicine_pri_3463832b.jpg

A portrait of China's Youyou Tu and an illustration describing her work are shown on a screen in Stockholm Photo: AFP/Getty

"The two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people annually," the committee said. "The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immensurable."

Campbell is a research fellow emeritus at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Omura, 80, is a professor emeritus at Kitasato University in Japan and is from the central prefecture of Yamanashi. Tu is chief professor at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Scientist who let bees sting him on 25 different body parts awarded Ig Nobel prize

The medicine award was the first Nobel Prize to be announced. The winners of the physics, chemistry and peace prizes are set to be announced later this week. The economics prize will be announced next Monday. No date has been set yet for the literature prize, but it is expected to be announced on Thursday.

The winners will share the 8 million Swedish kronor (about £600,000) prize money with one half going to Campbell and Omura, and the other to Tu. Each winner will also get a diploma and a gold medal at the annual award ceremony on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of prize founder Alfred Nobel.

Last year's medicine award went to three scientists who discovered the brain's inner navigation system.

Nobel Prizes 2015
View attachment 262569
Pic: AP/Fernando Vergara

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
  • William C Campbell & Satoshi Omura
  • Youyou Tu
 
First Nobel prize for Chinese medicine
Tu Youyou, 84, used traditional herbal medicine to help find a cure for Malaria

Urban-Lendahl-Secr_3463778b.jpg

Urban Lendahl (R), Secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, addresses a press conference of the Nobel Committee to announce the winners of the 2015 Nobel Medicine Prize at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm Photo: AFP/Getty
By Reuters 11:36AM BST 05 Oct 2015

Three scientists from Ireland, Japan and China won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries that helped doctors fight malaria and infections caused by roundworm parasites.

The Nobel judges in Stockholm awarded the prestigious prize to Irish-born William Campbell, Satoshi Omura and of Japan and Tu Youyou - the first ever Chinese medicine laureate.


Nobel_Medicine_Pri_3463824b.jpg

The portraits of the winners of the Nobel Medicine Prize 2015 (L-R) Irish-born William Campbell, Satoshi Omura of Japan and China's Youyou Tu are displayed on a screen Photo: AFP/Getty

Campbell and Omura were cited for discovering a drug that has helped lower the incidence of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, two diseases caused by parasitic worms.

• How the Nobel Prize has favoured white western men for more than 100 years

Tu discovered a drug that has helped significantly reduce the mortality rates of malaria patients.

Nobel_medicine_pri_3463832b.jpg

A portrait of China's Youyou Tu and an illustration describing her work are shown on a screen in Stockholm Photo: AFP/Getty

"The two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people annually," the committee said. "The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immensurable."

Campbell is a research fellow emeritus at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Omura, 80, is a professor emeritus at Kitasato University in Japan and is from the central prefecture of Yamanashi. Tu is chief professor at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Scientist who let bees sting him on 25 different body parts awarded Ig Nobel prize

The medicine award was the first Nobel Prize to be announced. The winners of the physics, chemistry and peace prizes are set to be announced later this week. The economics prize will be announced next Monday. No date has been set yet for the literature prize, but it is expected to be announced on Thursday.

The winners will share the 8 million Swedish kronor (about £600,000) prize money with one half going to Campbell and Omura, and the other to Tu. Each winner will also get a diploma and a gold medal at the annual award ceremony on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of prize founder Alfred Nobel.

Last year's medicine award went to three scientists who discovered the brain's inner navigation system.

Nobel Prizes 2015
View attachment 262569
Pic: AP/Fernando Vergara

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
  • William C Campbell & Satoshi Omura
  • Youyou Tu



It is not a nobel for traditional medicine.

Exactly, this question was asked to the noble committee, and they said that this award is not for the traditional medicine, or herbs. It is for artesiminin which is extracted out of it.
 
Other Nobel Prize potentials for Chinese Scientists:



Western Scientists Look To Chinese Medicine For Fresh Leads : Shots - Health News : NPR

Western Scientists Look To Chinese Medicine For Fresh Leads
JANUARY 18, 2014 2:56 PM ET
ALAN YU
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i
Workers prepare Chinese traditional medicine for customers in Beijing.

Alexander F. Yuan/AP
In the quest for new treatments, U.S. researchers are looking to traditional Chinese medicines, some of the oldest remedies in the world.

A recent discovery resulted in a better treatment for a type of leukemia that strikes about 1 in 250,000 people in the U.S. Another study found a potential new painkiller in China's medicine chest. Other researchers are studying a traditional medicinal plant called "thunder god vine" for its anti-cancer properties.

The approach has already had some success. The Chinese herbal medicine artemisinin, for instance, has gone on to become the most potent anti-malarial drug available.

Not all the leads have panned out, of course. But the old field has shown enough potential to keep interest high.

A better leukemia treatment drawn from an ancient medicine should give us hope for developing anti-cancer drugs, says Dr. Samuel Waxman, a co-author of the report and professor of medicine and cancer specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital. "It gives a lot of optimism of seeking other types of cancer medicines in the Chinese pharmacopedia, which many people are looking into," Waxman says.

The treatment uses arsenic trioxide, which has traditionally been used in Chinese medicine. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved arsenic trioxide (sold as Trisenox here) as a treatment in 2000, and later research showed that patients who received standard chemotherapy followed by arsenic trioxide did better than patients who just received standard chemotherapy.

But a big clinical test recently found that the drug, in combination with all-trans retinoic acid — another drug commonly used to treat acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) — turned out to be more effective than the usual chemotherapy.

That results means arsenic trioxide should become the new standard for patients that can use it, says Dr. Richard Stone, director of the adult acute leukemia program at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

"So this was a cure for leukemia without chemotherapy, really for the first time in a large randomized trial," says Stone. "We've got a patient in the hospital right now who's receiving that very therapy."

He says there are still side effects from the new regimen affecting the skin and heart, but for most people they're less of a problem than the hair loss, vomiting and diarrhea that can come with chemotherapy.

The arsenic trioxide treatment was developed by a Chinese doctor working in northern China during the Cultural Revolution, according to Mount Sinai's Waxman. This doctor couldn't use much Western medicine, so to treat his APL patients, he started giving them arsenic trioxide intravenously. He kept a journal for 10 years and noticed that it worked remarkably well. He eventually published his findings in 2001 with other collaborators.

"That was one of the first examples of a targeted treatment in all of cancer," Waxman says.

Other researchers are also studying triptolide, a natural product of a traditional Chinese medicinal plant called lei gong teng or "thunder god vine" as a possible anti-cancer drug. The product was effective against cancer in animal models and scientists in the West are now studying exactly how it works, says Jun Liu, one of the researchers and a professor of pharmacology and molecular sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

"Traditional medicine will always remain a useful source of new drugs. The question is, to what extent?" Liu says. "Drug discovery and development is a very lengthy and costly process and there are always failures."

Research into Chinese medicine is no different. Cancer reseachers at the University of Minnesota recently started an early clinical trial to study a drug that was developed from triptolide for treating pancreatic cancer, says Edward Greeno, associate professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota. He points out it took millions of dollars just to get to this point.

"It's easy to think, and normal to think, that if people are using it already then it shouldn't require a lot to develop it into a useful product. The problem is that our standard for what is safe and effective is very high, appropriately," Greeno says. "It looks like a pretty straight path but what you don't see are all the false starts and wrong turns that we make along the way."

Studying Chinese medicine for new treatments has had its share of wrong turns. Western scientists previously looked into treatments for the prevention of dementia,eczema, and bacteria that cause most types of stomach ulcers, but concluded they weren't particularly effective.

But the failures don't mean we should give up, says Brian Berman, a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland who served as the principal investigator of two Chinese medicine research initiatives funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Chinese medicine is one lead to consider, especially for chronic diseases that have yet to be cured. "The advantage you have when you look at some of the Chinese medicine therapies is that by and large, they are safe, as long as what you're getting doesn't have added ingredients," Berman says. "We need to look at what other cultures have to offer and then we need to put them through a scientifically rigorous test."


Also read this:

In the News: Western scientists look to traditional Chinese medicine to treat cancer

Larisa Pyskir
February 4, 2014 11:06 am

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Photo: Flickr user bomb_bao via CC

In the News: Western scientists look to traditional Chinese medicine to treat cancer - Health Talk

Traditional Chinese plants and medicines might seem like an unusual way to treat a serious illness. However, these historic remedies have caught the eye of medical researchers. The latest research from Samuel Waxman, M.D., of Mount Sinai Hospital states that traditional Chinese medicine could be as advantageous to chemotherapy in the treatment of some forms of cancer including leukemia.

Arsenic trioxide, traditionally used in Chinese medicine, was approved as a treatment for leukemia in 2000 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Following this approval, research later proved that patients that were given chemotherapy followed by arsenic trioxide did better than the patients that received the standard chemotherapy alone.

After this discovery, researchers then found that the combination of arsenic trioxide along with all-trans retinoic acid, a drug that is used to treat acute promyelocytic leukemia, was even more effective in treatment of leukemia than chemotherapy alone. This combination of traditional Chinese medicine and Western drugs is considered a cure for leukemia without chemotherapy. Richard Stone, M.D., the director of the adult acute leukemia program at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, says the results mean arsenic trioxide should become the new standard for patients that can use it.

The side effects from the arsenic trioxide involve the skin and heart, which for a majority of patients are of no concern compared to the grueling chemotherapy side effects of which include vomiting, hair loss and diarrhea.

In addition to research on traditional Chinese medicines leukemia treatments, researchers are also studying triptolide, a natural product of a traditional Chinese medical plant called lei gong teng as a potential anti-cancer drug. So far, results have been promising in animal models.

Treating cancer without the complications of chemotherapy sounds ideal, as does treating it with plant derivatives rather than radiation and chemotherapy. However, it gets complicated moving forward with the research findings. An early clinical trial to study a drug that was developed from a triptolide for treating pancreatic cancer began at the University of Minnesota. Edward Greeno, M.D., associate professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota, explains how costly and time consuming it has been to reach the point of even starting a trial.

“It’s easy to think, and normal to think, that if people are using it already then it shouldn’t require a lot to develop it into a useful product. The problem is that our standard for what is safe and effective is very high, appropriately,” Greeno says. “It looks like a pretty straight path but what you don’t see are all the false starts and wrong turns that we make along the way.”

Some of the “wrong turns” Greeno refers to in the study of Chinese medicine for new treatments include failed explorations in the prevention of dementia, eczema, and bacterias that cause stomach ulcers.

Despite the negative stipulations that are oftentimes associated with medical research such as, trial and error, high cost, and time consumption, people are still hopeful that traditional Chinese medicine could be a possible solution to fight cancer.

For more information on the Chinese medicine study, read this story that recently appeared on NPR.

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Qiu Shi foundation acclaims scientists at USTC ceremony
Updated: 2015-09-28 13:24
By Zhu Lixin in Heifei(China Daily)


Eleven individuals and one team were recently presented with awards by the Hong Kong-based Qiu Shi Science and Technologies Foundation at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, the capital of East China's Anhui province.

An 83-year-old doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine was granted the most prestigious award. Zhang Tingdong, from the First Clinical Hospital affiliated to Harbin Medical University, received the Outstanding Scientist Award and 1 million yuan ($157,200) for his contribution to the treatment of acute promyelocytic leukemia, a cancer that affects white blood cells, with arsenic trioxide, which the foundation called "a major breakthrough in medical science".

Zhang's research began in the 1970s, when he discovered that leukemia prescriptions issued by a number of experienced TCM doctors contained arsenic trioxide, which is highly toxic.

Later, during research and clinical trials Zhang discovered that the inorganic compound was effective in curing APL, but much more work was required to improve efficiency and reduce side effects.

In the 1990s, Zhang collaborated with some of the China's leading medical research institutes and succeeded in creating medicines made from arsenic trioxide and retinoic acid to treat APL. The treatments "have been long regarded by the world as standard medicines in the treatment of the disease ever since", said Shi Yigong, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and vice-president of Tsinghua University.

Shi, who is also a top life scientist and an adviser to the Qiu Shi foundation, said the APL recovery rate using Zhang's treatment reached more than 90 percent, and Zhang has cured more than 1,200 leukemia patients.

The Outstanding Scientific Research Team Award went to the Hepatitis E Vaccine team at Xiamen University - the inventors of the world's first vaccine for recombinant hepatitis E, which went on the market in 2012.

Ten other scientists from seven universities and institutes received Outstanding Young Scholar Awards.

"The peculiarity of the Qiu Shi awards lies in its unofficial background and its role as a supplement to the official science and technology awards system", said Ma Mingming, 35, a chemistry professor at USTC.

Ma was recognized for his research in bio-inspired polymer composite actuator and generator driven by water gradients. He will receive $150,000 from the Qiu Shi foundation over three years to support further research.

The ceremony was also attended by renowned scientists such as Chen Ning Yang - a Nobel laureate in physics, and Sun Jiadong, laureate of the nation's Two Bombs, One Satellite Award.

zhulixin@chinadaily.com.cn

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Chen Ning Yang (center), 1957 Nobel laureate in physics, visited USTC before attending the Qiu Shi foundation's award ceremony on Sept 19. Yang, who has visited the university several times and stays in close contact, spoke highly of the scientifi c strengths of USTC. Bian Shipeng / For China Daily

Qiu Shi foundation acclaims scientists at USTC ceremony|China|chinadaily.com.cn


Dr Zhang Tingdong and his team's publications:

Arsenic trioxide, a therapeutic agent for APL
 
Let me rephrase it to.

Finally, we Asians of the developing world, are able to win a Nobel while studying and working in our own country!

still Hideki won the first Nobel Prize for Japan in 1949, Japan was hardly developed back then (Remember they were atomic bombed and pillaged by WW2 only 4 years ago)
 
Wang Zhenyi, Chen Zhu Win U.S. Award for Cancer Research
March 08, 2012 Author: School of Medicine
Wang%20Zhenyi,%20Chen%20Zhu%20Win%20U.S.%20Award%20for%20Cancer%20Research_normal.jpg


New York March 6,

Dr. Wang Zhenyi (second from left of photo)and Dr. Chen Zhu (far right of photo) were awarded the 7th Annual Szent-Györgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Researchin praise of their original research result and its remarkable curative effect on the treatment of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). The two professors will share the award money of 25,000 US dollars.

The award ceremony sponsored by the National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR), USA was attended by several hundred representatives from cancer research institutes and biomedical enterprises.

"The Szent Gyorgyi Prize is about breakthroughs in cancer research, breakthroughs that are making possible new approaches to treating cancer, breakthroughs that are getting millions around the world promises, raising our hopes that cancer will be cured," NFCR President Franklin Salisbury told audience at the award ceremony, "and what the two Chinese scientists have achieved is exactly one of such promising breakthroughs".

Read more: "Chinese Scientists Zhen-Yi Wang and Zhu Chen Awarded 7th Annual Szent-Györgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research - Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia from Highly Fatal to Highly Curable" (National Foundation for Cancer Research)

Translated by Hou Yulu | Reviewed by Tian Cong

Jiao Tong University - Wang Zhenyi, Chen Zhu Win U.S. Award for Cancer Research


CHINESE SCIENTISTS ZHEN-YI WANG AND ZHU CHEN AWARDED 7TH ANNUAL SZENT-GYÖRGYI PRIZE FOR PROGRESS IN CANCER RESEARCH

(BETHESDA, Maryland, January 24, 2012) — NFCR announced today that Dr. Zhen-Yi Wang and Dr. Zhu Chen have been awarded the 2012 Szent-Györgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research for their innovative research that led to the successful development of a new therapeutic approach to acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL).

By combining traditional Chinese medicine with Western medicine, Drs. Wang and Chen have provided dramatic improvement in the five-year disease-free survival rate of APL patients - from approximately 25 percent to 95 percent - making this therapy a standard of care for APL treatment throughout the world, and turning one of the most fatal diseases into a highly curable one.

"I am so glad to see that the efforts we have devoted to research on leukemia these last several decades have led to solid clinical benefits to APL patients around the world," said Dr. Wang. "This award will inspire us as we continue our efforts to find more effective therapies to treat cancers."

"This is a great honor for Dr. Wang and me; it is quite humbling to know that our respected colleagues from many scientific disciplines have selected us for this prestigious award," said Dr. Chen, who also serves as China's Minister of Health. "Scientists across the globe are working every day to cure cancer. I hope our work may continue to inspire others."

A clinical researcher at the Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai in the early 1980s, Dr. Zhen-Yi Wang performed the first successful therapy on APL patients using all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA), which significantly increased the survival rate of patients with APL. Dr. Zhu Chen, a former student of Wang, made major contributions to the identification of the molecular mechanisms of both ATRA and arsenic trioxide in APL. He also demonstrated in clinical trials that arsenic trioxide, a compound used as a traditional Chinese medicine for over 2,400 years, is effective against APL. Since the 1990s, Drs. Wang and Chen have worked together to conduct clinical trials combining ATRA and arsenic trioxide to treat APL patients, with great success.

"Drs. Wang and Chen have quite literally changed the face of medicine for patients suffering from APL. Their combined work has saved countless lives and will continue to save many more lives around the world both today and in future generations," said Dr. Beatrice Mintz, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Chair of the 2012 Selection Committee of Szent-Györgyi Prize and winner of the 6th Annual Albert Szent-Gyorgyi Prize. "Terminal differentiation of cancer cells has been an important focus in my research, and I am very happy about the successful clinical application of this principle by Drs. Wang and Chen. I cannot imagine a better testament to the outcomes of investing in cancer research than what these two distinguished scientists have achieved."

"In keeping with the spirit of nonconformity for which NFCR founder Albert Szent-Györgyi is known, the selection of Drs. Wang and Chen has a significant meaning for those who work in the trenches of cancer research each day," said Sujuan Ba, Ph.D., co-chair of the Szent-Györgyi Prize Selection Committee and chief operating officer of NFCR. "True scientific discovery comes from innovative ideas and dedicated research. These two scientists are inspirational, as they both have devoted their lives to this work that will impact the world for generations to come."

About the National Foundation for Cancer Research
The National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR) is a leading charity dedicated to funding cancer research and public education relating to cancer prevention, earlier diagnosis, better treatments and, ultimately, cures for cancer. NFCR promotes and facilitates collaboration among scientists to accelerate the pace of discovery from bench to bedside.

Since 1973, NFCR has provided over $300 million in direct support of discovery-oriented cancer research focused on understanding how and why cells become cancerous, and on public education relating to cancer prevention, detection, and treatment. NFCR scientists are discovering cancer's molecular mysteries and translating these discoveries into therapies that hold the hope for curing cancer. NFCR is about Research for a Cure-cures for alltypes of cancer. For more information, please visitwww.NFCR.org.

About the Szent-Györgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research
The annual Szent-Györgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Researchwas established by the National Foundation for Cancer Research to recognize outstanding scientific achievements in the war against cancer and to honor pioneering scientists who have made extraordinary contributions in cancer research. The focus of the Prize is on the critically important role that basic science plays in cancer research and in its application to cancer therapies. The Prize, which includes a $25,000 honorarium, will be presented to Dr. Wang and Dr. Chen at an award ceremony March 6, 2012 at The Westin Times Square in New York City.

The 2012 Szent-Györgyi Prize Selection Committee was Chaired by Beatrice Mintz, Ph.D., and Co-Chaired by Sujuan Ba, Ph.D. The other selection committee members included leaders in cancer research and drug development from academic institutes and biotech and pharmaceutical industries: Lewis C. Cantley, Ph.D., Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School; Webster K. Cavenee, Ph.D., Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research; Carlo M. Croce, M.D., The Ohio State University; Harold F. Dvorak, M.D., Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School; Stanley Fields, Ph.D., Howard Hughes Medical Institute and University of Washington; Richard B. Gaynor, M.D., Eli Lilly and Company; Paul Mischel, M.D., University of California, Los Angeles; Richard O'Reilly, M.D., Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Scott D. Patterson, Ph.D., Amgen, Inc.; Gregg L. Semenza, M.D., Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Peter K. Vogt, Ph.D., The Scripps Research Institute; Zena Werb, Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco. For more information, please visit www.asgprize.org.

About Dr. Zhen-Yi Wang
Dr. Wang is currently a professor at the School of Medicine of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and is recognized as one of the experts in thrombosis and haemostasis in China. He serves as honorary director of the Shanghai Institute of Haematology, and also served as former honorary editor-in-chief of The Chinese Journal of Hematology, former council member of International Society for Heart Research and International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH). He is an elected Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and is a foreign associate of The French Academy of Science. Dr. Wang also once served as the advisor for Chen when he studied for his Master's degree.

Dr. Wang received his Medical Doctorate from Aurora University in 1948. He has published, as editor-in-chief, 5 books, and, as editor and translator, for Hemorrhage Diseases, as well as 14 monographs. He is the author of more than 320 scientific papers.

About Dr. Zhu Chen
Dr. Chen currently serves as Minister of Health of the People's Republic of China where he was appointed in 2007. He is the only non-party member to hold that post since the 1970s. Sent off for "re-education" during the Cultural Revolution,Dr. Chen learned medicine by himself for 2 years and was figuratively a "barefoot doctor" practicing many of the traditional Chinese therapies. Recognized for his medical work by the local countryside people, Dr. Chen was selected to attend medical school at Shangrao Health School. He later achieved his Master's degree from the Shanghai Second Medical University and his Doctorate from the University of Paris VII.

Dr. Chen was a Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences since 2000 to 2007. He holds a professorship at the School of Medicine of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai. Chen was elected Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and is a foreign associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the US Institute of Medicine, the French Academy of Sciences, and a member of the Third World Academy of Sciences. He is a Member of the European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities and has been awarded the State Scientific and Technological Awards by the Chinese government and the "Prix de l'Qise" by "La Ligue Nationale contre le Cancer" of France, the first non-French winner.



Media Contact:

Silas Deane
615-319-6007
sdeane@nfcr.org
 
China's Youyou Tu had won the 2011 Lasker Award (ie. American Nobel Prize).

"The Lasker Foundation - 2011 Awards

The 2011 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award honors a scientist who discovered artemisinin and its utility for treating malaria. Tu Youyou (China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing) developed a therapy that has saved millions of lives across the globe, especially in the developing world. An artemisinin-based drug combination is now the standard regimen for malaria, and the World Health Organization (WHO) lists artemisinin and related agents in its catalog of 'Essential Medicines.' Each year, several hundred million people contract malaria. Without treatment, many more of them would die than do now. Tu led a team that transformed an ancient Chinese healing method into the most powerful antimalarial medicine currently available."
----------

The Lasker Foundation - 2011 Awards

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Acute promyelocytic leukemia: from highly fatal to highly curable
  1. Zhen-Yi Wang1
    Dr Zhen-Yi Wang obtained his MD degree in 1948 from the Aurora University School of Medicine, a French Jesuit university that was merged into the Shanghai Second Medical College (then Shanghai Second Medical University and now Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine) with two other foreign-founded medical schools. He began his medical career in Rui-Jin Hospital (formerly Sainte-Marie Hospital) and served as a resident doctor, majoring in general internal medicine. In 1952 he was promoted to Visiting Doctor and was required to select a field of specialty. “I love music and enjoy playing violin in my spare time, so I love things like musical notes that are simple and neat,” Wang recalled. “I erroneously thought that hematology was a simple and neat discipline: with just a microscope, blood cell counts and morphological examinations on blood smears can be conducted, and then a diagnosis can be made. I chose hematology without hesitation.” Hematology was in its infant stage in China; systematic training was unavailable and advanced education abroad was inaccessible. So Wang figured out a self-training program. “During my residency in the hospital, I met bleeding of unknown causes frequently and I looked for ways to distinguish these disorders in books and journals that were available to me. For example, I read Clinical Hematology edited by Wintrobe and translatedHemorrhagic Disorders edited by Stefanini and Dameshek into Chinese.”

    Wang%20Zhenyi,%20Chen%20Zhu%20Win%20U.S.%20Award%20for%20Cancer%20Research_normal.jpg

    From left to right, Drs. Sai-Juan Chen, Zhu Chen, Samuel Waxman, Zhen-Yi Wang, and Hong-Wei Li, who is the Director General of Rui Jim Hospital.


    Although leukemia was the most common disease in the hematology department of Rui-Jin hospital, therapeutic options for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) were very limited and therapies usually failed, and clinical outcome was even worse for patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). These grave facts prompted Wang to further explore therapeutic strategies for AML. Unfortunately, he was treated as a “reactionary academic authority” during the Cultural Revolution (1967-1978) and had to quit his research for 11 years. Afterward he resumed his work in trying to develop a therapeutic approach for AML, but he faced a challenge in choosing the research orientation: to find new cytotoxic chemotherapy agents or to try other strategies? Wang was enlightened by ancient Chinese philosophy. “Cancer cells are ‘bad’ elements within our body,” he thought; “can they be ‘educated’ to return to normal, so that cancer can be treated without killing?” He found his idea met well with the emerging concept of cancer differentiation therapy, and he contributed great efforts to screen for differentiation inducers using APL cell lines and primary cells isolated from patients. “We were extremely lucky in that the isomer of retinoic acid available in Shanghai at that time was the all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA),” he said, “and we found that ATRA triggers a terminal maturation of APL cells. The intriguing in vitro data were the impetus for us to conduct a clinical trial.” His group introduced ATRA in treating APL in 1985, and reported the dramatic efficacy in Blood in 1988. Their results were progressively recognized worldwide, and hundreds of thousands of APL patients benefit from this achievement.

    Wang received the Kettering Prize from the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation USA in 1994, the Prize of Brupbacher from Switzerland in 1997, the Prize for Science from the Simmon Del Ducca Foundation of France in 1998, and the Lecture Award of Ham-Wasserman from the American Society of Hematology in 2003. He was made an Honorary Doctor of Science by Columbia University in 2001, and received the Outstanding Mentor Award from the Shanghai Municipal government in 2003. He was elected a Foreign Associate member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1992 and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 1994. He has published more than 300 papers, in which he is the first author in about 40. He is now a Professor Emeritus at Shanghai Jialo Tong University School of Medicine and honorary Director of the Shanghai Institute of Hematology, Rui-Jin Hospital. He is still dedicated to hematology, particularly to researching leukemogenesis and targeted therapies for other subtypes of leukemia.

    Dr Zhu Chen grew up in a family of doctors in Shanghai, China. He left school in 1966 because of the Cultural Revolution and went to a remote rural village where he educated himself and worked as both a farmer and a “barefoot” doctor. He entered a 2-year medical course in 1975 and received advanced training at Rui-Jin Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Second Medical University (now called Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine). Here he met Dr Zhen-Yi Wang, a hematologist. Two factors quickly led Chen to choose hematology as his career. The first was purely scientific, as he recalled: “I initially thought that hematology was a difficult discipline in that remedies for diseases like leukemia and hemophilia were limited, while the pathogenesis was elusive. But when I read advanced literature I realized this could be changed thanks to advances in immunology, biochemistry, and molecular biology. The discoveries in hemoglobinopathy pathogenesis predicted similar breakthroughs in leukemia and hemophilia.” The second factor was the restoration of the formal education program in China. Under Wang's supervision, Chen carried out 3 years' research on several disparate diseases and published procedures for detection and discrimination of hemophilia A carriers and variants of von Willebrand disease. He also focused on cell culture in leukemia and gained great interest in therapeutic approaches such as immunotherapy and differentiation therapy for cancer.

    After graduate studies and an internship at Rui-Jin Hospital from 1981 to 1984, Chen relocated to the Central Hematology Laboratory at Saint-Louis Hospital (Paris), where he spent his first year as a visiting intern and worked with Jean Bernard, Jean Dausset, Michel Boiron, Georges Flandrin, Francois Sigaux, and Laurent Degos of the University of Paris VII. Between October 1985 and January 1989 he completed his PhD and continued postdoctoral studies concerning the rearrangement and expression of T cell receptor (TCR) genes in human leukemia and characterized part of the TCRgamma chain region, participated in the work on several oncogenes, and published extensively on many different aspects of leukemia. “Those years in Paris were a second leap forward in my research career as a hematologist. Although I learned quite a lot about molecular biology, I never forgot the patients. Of course, this period also allowed me to accumulate international experiences, which are essential in advancing science,” Chen said. During his stay in Paris, Chen kept in close contact with Wang, who informed him of all the progress in Shanghai, particularly the work showing that all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) was successful in treating acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), the M3 subtype of acute myeloid leukemia, through induction of maturation of abnormal promyelocytes. Chen and his wife, Dr Sai-Juan Chen, were deeply interested in these results and wanted to elcidate the molecular basis of APL pathogenesis and differentiation therapy, so in July of 1989 Chen returned to China to take up a post at the Shanghai Institute of Hematology at Rui-Jin Hospital. By further analyzing the genetics and phenotype of APL, Chen's group identified the first variant chromosomal translocation t(11;17) with RARalpha fused to a distinct partner, PLZF, in a subset of APL that is resistant to ATRA. Chen and his collaborators carried out comparative studies between t(15;17) and t(11;17) that helped reveal a key mechanism in ATRA action: the modulation of aberrant RARalpha proteins and their coregulators. He studied gene expression networks underlying retinoic acid–induced differentiation and identified many retinoic acid–induced genes (RIGs) that were shown to have important biological functions.

    In the mid-1990s, Chen and colleagues were first to demonstrate that arsenic trioxide (ATO) modulates PML-RARalpha oncoprotein and exerts dose-dependent dual effects on APL cells (eg, triggers differentiation at low doses and induces apoptosis at greater concentrations). They published results of the first controlled clinical trial using purified ATO and showed the efficacy of ATO in treating relapsed APL patients, and described for the first time the pharmacokinetics of ATO in vivo. In 2000, after analyzing rationales with his collaborators, Chen initiated a trial using ATRA/ATO combination in treating newly diagnosed APL, and reported in 2004 that a shorter time to achieve CR, a more profound reduction in PML-RARalpha transcript, and particularly much less relapse of disease were obtained in patients treated with ATRA in combination with ATO as compared with treatment with ATRA or ATO alone as remission induction. Chen also contributed to the Human Genome Project and Human Cancer Genome Project, and to systems biology research in China. He trained many young researchers who are now principle investigators in hematology/oncology or genomics in China, the US, and other countries. He was the Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences from 2000 to June 2007, and was then appointed as the Minister of Health of Chinese government.

    and
  2. Zhu Chen 1,2
Author Affiliations
  1. Shanghai Institute of Hematology and State Key Laboratory of Medical Genomics, Rui Jin Hospital affiliated to the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) School of Medicine, Shanghai; and
  2. Shanghai Center for Systems Biomedicine at SJTU, Shanghai, China
Blood Journal | Acute promyelocytic leukemia: from highly fatal to highly curable

Dr Wang and Chen's publication

https://www.sgh.com.sg/about-us/new...ents/ASH 50th anniversary review_Chen Zhu.pdf
 
Acute promyelocytic leukemia: from highly fatal to highly curable
  1. Zhen-Yi Wang1
    Dr Zhen-Yi Wang obtained his MD degree in 1948 from the Aurora University School of Medicine, a French Jesuit university that was merged into the Shanghai Second Medical College (then Shanghai Second Medical University and now Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine) with two other foreign-founded medical schools. He began his medical career in Rui-Jin Hospital (formerly Sainte-Marie Hospital) and served as a resident doctor, majoring in general internal medicine. In 1952 he was promoted to Visiting Doctor and was required to select a field of specialty. “I love music and enjoy playing violin in my spare time, so I love things like musical notes that are simple and neat,” Wang recalled. “I erroneously thought that hematology was a simple and neat discipline: with just a microscope, blood cell counts and morphological examinations on blood smears can be conducted, and then a diagnosis can be made. I chose hematology without hesitation.” Hematology was in its infant stage in China; systematic training was unavailable and advanced education abroad was inaccessible. So Wang figured out a self-training program. “During my residency in the hospital, I met bleeding of unknown causes frequently and I looked for ways to distinguish these disorders in books and journals that were available to me. For example, I read Clinical Hematology edited by Wintrobe and translatedHemorrhagic Disorders edited by Stefanini and Dameshek into Chinese.”

    Wang%20Zhenyi,%20Chen%20Zhu%20Win%20U.S.%20Award%20for%20Cancer%20Research_normal.jpg

    From left to right, Drs. Sai-Juan Chen, Zhu Chen, Samuel Waxman, Zhen-Yi Wang, and Hong-Wei Li, who is the Director General of Rui Jim Hospital.


    Although leukemia was the most common disease in the hematology department of Rui-Jin hospital, therapeutic options for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) were very limited and therapies usually failed, and clinical outcome was even worse for patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). These grave facts prompted Wang to further explore therapeutic strategies for AML. Unfortunately, he was treated as a “reactionary academic authority” during the Cultural Revolution (1967-1978) and had to quit his research for 11 years. Afterward he resumed his work in trying to develop a therapeutic approach for AML, but he faced a challenge in choosing the research orientation: to find new cytotoxic chemotherapy agents or to try other strategies? Wang was enlightened by ancient Chinese philosophy. “Cancer cells are ‘bad’ elements within our body,” he thought; “can they be ‘educated’ to return to normal, so that cancer can be treated without killing?” He found his idea met well with the emerging concept of cancer differentiation therapy, and he contributed great efforts to screen for differentiation inducers using APL cell lines and primary cells isolated from patients. “We were extremely lucky in that the isomer of retinoic acid available in Shanghai at that time was the all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA),” he said, “and we found that ATRA triggers a terminal maturation of APL cells. The intriguing in vitro data were the impetus for us to conduct a clinical trial.” His group introduced ATRA in treating APL in 1985, and reported the dramatic efficacy in Blood in 1988. Their results were progressively recognized worldwide, and hundreds of thousands of APL patients benefit from this achievement.

    Wang received the Kettering Prize from the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation USA in 1994, the Prize of Brupbacher from Switzerland in 1997, the Prize for Science from the Simmon Del Ducca Foundation of France in 1998, and the Lecture Award of Ham-Wasserman from the American Society of Hematology in 2003. He was made an Honorary Doctor of Science by Columbia University in 2001, and received the Outstanding Mentor Award from the Shanghai Municipal government in 2003. He was elected a Foreign Associate member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1992 and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 1994. He has published more than 300 papers, in which he is the first author in about 40. He is now a Professor Emeritus at Shanghai Jialo Tong University School of Medicine and honorary Director of the Shanghai Institute of Hematology, Rui-Jin Hospital. He is still dedicated to hematology, particularly to researching leukemogenesis and targeted therapies for other subtypes of leukemia.

    Dr Zhu Chen grew up in a family of doctors in Shanghai, China. He left school in 1966 because of the Cultural Revolution and went to a remote rural village where he educated himself and worked as both a farmer and a “barefoot” doctor. He entered a 2-year medical course in 1975 and received advanced training at Rui-Jin Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Second Medical University (now called Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine). Here he met Dr Zhen-Yi Wang, a hematologist. Two factors quickly led Chen to choose hematology as his career. The first was purely scientific, as he recalled: “I initially thought that hematology was a difficult discipline in that remedies for diseases like leukemia and hemophilia were limited, while the pathogenesis was elusive. But when I read advanced literature I realized this could be changed thanks to advances in immunology, biochemistry, and molecular biology. The discoveries in hemoglobinopathy pathogenesis predicted similar breakthroughs in leukemia and hemophilia.” The second factor was the restoration of the formal education program in China. Under Wang's supervision, Chen carried out 3 years' research on several disparate diseases and published procedures for detection and discrimination of hemophilia A carriers and variants of von Willebrand disease. He also focused on cell culture in leukemia and gained great interest in therapeutic approaches such as immunotherapy and differentiation therapy for cancer.

    After graduate studies and an internship at Rui-Jin Hospital from 1981 to 1984, Chen relocated to the Central Hematology Laboratory at Saint-Louis Hospital (Paris), where he spent his first year as a visiting intern and worked with Jean Bernard, Jean Dausset, Michel Boiron, Georges Flandrin, Francois Sigaux, and Laurent Degos of the University of Paris VII. Between October 1985 and January 1989 he completed his PhD and continued postdoctoral studies concerning the rearrangement and expression of T cell receptor (TCR) genes in human leukemia and characterized part of the TCRgamma chain region, participated in the work on several oncogenes, and published extensively on many different aspects of leukemia. “Those years in Paris were a second leap forward in my research career as a hematologist. Although I learned quite a lot about molecular biology, I never forgot the patients. Of course, this period also allowed me to accumulate international experiences, which are essential in advancing science,” Chen said. During his stay in Paris, Chen kept in close contact with Wang, who informed him of all the progress in Shanghai, particularly the work showing that all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) was successful in treating acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), the M3 subtype of acute myeloid leukemia, through induction of maturation of abnormal promyelocytes. Chen and his wife, Dr Sai-Juan Chen, were deeply interested in these results and wanted to elcidate the molecular basis of APL pathogenesis and differentiation therapy, so in July of 1989 Chen returned to China to take up a post at the Shanghai Institute of Hematology at Rui-Jin Hospital. By further analyzing the genetics and phenotype of APL, Chen's group identified the first variant chromosomal translocation t(11;17) with RARalpha fused to a distinct partner, PLZF, in a subset of APL that is resistant to ATRA. Chen and his collaborators carried out comparative studies between t(15;17) and t(11;17) that helped reveal a key mechanism in ATRA action: the modulation of aberrant RARalpha proteins and their coregulators. He studied gene expression networks underlying retinoic acid–induced differentiation and identified many retinoic acid–induced genes (RIGs) that were shown to have important biological functions.

    In the mid-1990s, Chen and colleagues were first to demonstrate that arsenic trioxide (ATO) modulates PML-RARalpha oncoprotein and exerts dose-dependent dual effects on APL cells (eg, triggers differentiation at low doses and induces apoptosis at greater concentrations). They published results of the first controlled clinical trial using purified ATO and showed the efficacy of ATO in treating relapsed APL patients, and described for the first time the pharmacokinetics of ATO in vivo. In 2000, after analyzing rationales with his collaborators, Chen initiated a trial using ATRA/ATO combination in treating newly diagnosed APL, and reported in 2004 that a shorter time to achieve CR, a more profound reduction in PML-RARalpha transcript, and particularly much less relapse of disease were obtained in patients treated with ATRA in combination with ATO as compared with treatment with ATRA or ATO alone as remission induction. Chen also contributed to the Human Genome Project and Human Cancer Genome Project, and to systems biology research in China. He trained many young researchers who are now principle investigators in hematology/oncology or genomics in China, the US, and other countries. He was the Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences from 2000 to June 2007, and was then appointed as the Minister of Health of Chinese government.

    and
  2. Zhu Chen 1,2
Author Affiliations
  1. Shanghai Institute of Hematology and State Key Laboratory of Medical Genomics, Rui Jin Hospital affiliated to the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) School of Medicine, Shanghai; and
  2. Shanghai Center for Systems Biomedicine at SJTU, Shanghai, China
Blood Journal | Acute promyelocytic leukemia: from highly fatal to highly curable

Dr Wang and Chen's publication

https://www.sgh.com.sg/about-us/newsroom/latesthighlights/Documents/ASH 50th anniversary review_Chen Zhu.pdf
From my university's medical college.
If he can live longer.....definitely nobel prize.
 
Some of existing traditional medicines in East and South East Asia can cure diseases that the West has not found cure. Chinese should promote their tradition medicines.
 
It is a disgrace that she was not a part of CAS. A real disgrace.

Brings to forth the problems with CAS.
You should know it!
How can u gain that much knowledge about Sino~?
*maybe some mistakes occurred to my phone...
 
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