GIVING BACK TO INSPIRE
Chinese doctor tames leukemia on the cheap
What can patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) do with 290 yuan ($42)?
Thanks to 96-year-old doctor Wang Zhenyi, they can buy a box of potentially life-saving drugs at an affordable price in China.
Last month, Wang, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering and professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University, along with Zhang Tingdong, professor at Harbin Medical University, were awarded the 7-million-yuan 2020 Future Science Prize for their discovery of the therapeutic effects of arsenic trioxide (ATO) and all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) on APL.
APL is an aggressive type of leukemia. Promyelocytes are white blood cells that are young and immature. They are too underdeveloped to perform the roles of fully mature white blood cells in the body.
In 1978, Wang and his colleagues started to explore new approaches to treat APL at a time when the main strategy was to target the malignant cells with chemotherapy. About one in 10 APL patients can live up to five years after chemotherapy.
In a review article published in the journal Blood in 2008, Wang said he was inspired by Confucius’ philosophy on the management of society which is to guide people by virtue rather than controlling them by penalties.
New approach
If cancer cells are considered elements with “bad” social behavior, “educating” rather than killing might represent a much better solution, he said.
In 1986, a 6-year-old girl with APL was brought back from the edge of death after taking ATRA, a specialized form of vitamin A, for a week. ATRA can force the promyelocytic leukemia cells to mature, curing the source of the disease.
This was taken as the first successful case of induced differentiation of cancer cells. For more than three decades, the girl has remained in good health.
Wang was 62 at the time. Many people said he could retire after a successful career. But he continued his work and, with his students, combined ATRA with ATO to treat APL patients in 1997.
Arsenic, a well-known poison, is also one of the oldest drugs in both Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).
In TCM, arsenic is applied to only severe diseases with the principle of “taming an evil with a toxic agent.” In the early 1970s, a group from Harbin Medical University in northeast China identified ATO as an active ingredient from an anticancer remedy.
By combining the two, Wang increased the five-year survival rate of APL patients from 10 percent to more than 97 percent, making APL the first highly curable type of leukemia.
Wang likes to share his favorite painting with others. It’s a painting of a peony in simple and subdued colors. The flower, in traditional Chinese culture, is a symbol of splendor with vivid and bright colors.
It is the peony’s own choice to be unadorned or showy, according to a stage play based on Wang produced by Shanghai Jiaotong University.
He never applied for patents for ATRA, hoping to make it an affordable treatment for every APL patient.
Inspiring young researchers
Wang has earned millions of yuan in awards which he donates to good causes. In 1996, he received the Qiushi Outstanding Scientist Award and donated 90 percent of the 1-millionyuan prize to hospitals, schools and the Shanghai Institute of Hematology. In 2011, Wang was awarded China’s top science award and gave away the entire 5 million yuan reward.
In 2020, Wang donated the Future Science Prize to China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation.
He told reporters he had mixed feelings about winning the Future Science Prize. He is happy to be rewarded, but worried that it is not given to young researchers.
“We have worked hard for decades to solve only one type of acute leukemia, not all of them,” said Wang. “Rewarding young people can encourage them to continue their efforts and realize our unfulfilled dreams.”
He added that he can still do something for young researchers, namely the “open-book examination” he has been doing for 20 years.
Each week, his students bring an “undiagnosable” case to him. He will search the latest academic papers to discuss the case with the young researchers.
The young doctors do not have much time to read academic research papers, said Wang, noting that he is glad to do the extensive reading and select papers for them to read, think and apply.
“I may not have another five or 10 years to witness a new achievement,” said Wang, “But I can be their climbing stick.”
At the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day party organized by her school, Nilza Adolfo Matiqute, an international student from Mozambique, stood up and grabbed the microphone to sing her favorite Chinese song “Molihua,” or jasmine.
The junior student was excited to give her first performance in 10 months since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I was so happy. I haven’t been with so many people for a long time,” Matiqute said in fluent Chinese.
Matiqute, 27, majors in the Chinese language at Taiyuan University of Technology, North China’s Shanxi Province.
China celebrates its National Day on October 1, and the weeklong holiday this year has been extended to October 8 as it overlapped with the
Mid-Autumn Festival, a traditional festival symbolizing family reunion that falls on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar.
While Chinese people are celebrating the long holiday as COVID-19 infections have been basically brought under control in the country, Matiqute is able to attend the party, visit the family of a local teacher and tour around the city of Taiyuan.
She visited Liuxiang pedestrian street and Yingze Park, popular tourist destinations in the provincial capital Taiyuan, where she was delighted to see crowds again.
“Except for the people with masks in some indoor places such as movie theaters, the city looks no different from one year ago,” the student added.
She said the quick resumption of social life was largely thanks to the strict and timely epidemic control measures that the Chinese government has taken.
During the epidemic, Matiqute volunteered to take daily body temperature measurements for all international students in her school. As a participant in epidemic prevention and control, she witnessed how the epidemic was controlled step by step.
She recalled that classes had returned to normal from June, and the restrictions on random access to campus were gradually relaxed.
“The city during the holiday is more dynamic than it was a few months ago,” she said.
China saw 425 million domestic tourist visits in the first four days of the eight-day holiday, with total tourism revenue of 312 billion yuan ($45.8 billion), the Ministry of Culture and Tourism said.
Trip.com Group, China’s largest online travel company, predicted that the number of domestic tourists for this “Golden Week” will reach 600 million.
During this holiday, Matiqute chose not to travel like last year. She stayed in town, went shopping and ate her favorite hot pot.
“I had to wait in line for a seat like before the epidemic,” said Matiqute. “The catering, transportation, entertainment and other industries in the city have returned to their former liveliness, and takeout and express delivery on campus have resumed normal operations.”
Speaking on her future plans, the young African woman hopes to become a translator.
“This place is full of opportunities. I hope I can build a bridge of communication and help more people in the world to discover China, understand China, and fall in love with China,” she said.