At the end of November last year,  Chi-Huey Wong (翁啟惠), the former president of Academia Sinica, returned to Taiwan from the United States for a banquet hosted by three former presidents of the Legislative Yuan (Si-kun You 游錫堃, Jin-pyng Wang 王金平, and Jia-chyuan Su蘇嘉全). The cause for celebration? Wong had just been awarded the most prestigious award in the field of American chemistry: the Welch Award.

After being found innocent in the OBI Pharma insider trading lawsuit, he issued a statement declaring: “Although justice has been done, reputation is difficult to rebuild.” (note: Wong stepped down from Academia Sinica in 2016 under pressure for alleged insider trading and a conflict of interest.) 

Now aged 73, Wong is the recipient of the 2021 Welch Award in Chemistry. His leadership of the Academia Sinica Genomics Research Center during the time when they released a broad-acting coronavirus vaccine has also attracted a lot of attention.

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Chi-Huey Wong

• Born: 1948

• Current positions: Scripps Family Chair Professor and Professor of Chemistry at Scripps Research, USA; Distinguished Research Fellow, Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taiwan; President of the Institute for Biotechnology and Medicine Industry, Taiwan. 

• Education: B.S. in Biochemical Sciences, National Taiwan University; M.S. in Biochemical Sciences, National Taiwan University; Ph.D. in Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, MIT.

• Awards: Elected Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, 2002; The Wolf Prize in Chemistry, 2014; Welch Award in Chemistry, 2021.

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Research has been his lifelong ambition. During the two years of the OBI Pharma lawsuit, Wong could do nothing but immerse himself in laboratory research. This period became the most productive period of his life, as he published a total of 39 articles. 

Wong is also the President of Taiwan’s  Institute for Biotechnology and Medicine Industry. He believes that by 2030, the biopharmaceuticals and health industry will be worth 15 trillion USD. 

CommonWealth magazine spoke to Chi-Huey Wong about his research journey, his personal setbacks, and the potential offered by further cooperation between Taiwan’s ICT and healthcare industries.

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CommonWealth: How important are glycans (the carbohydrate-based polymers made by all living organisms)? Why was your research recognized by the U.S. Welch Prize?

Wong: Out of the three major molecules in the biosphere, glycans are the least understood.

When I started studying, I was very curious as to why carbohydrates were everywhere, but this topic wasn’t taught at high school or university. It was only after I went into academic research that I discovered glycans play an important role in the formation of diseases. I developed a lot of new methods such as synthesis,  glycan chips, and glycan probes, to understand what role glycans play in the formation of diseases. I also developed new medical treatment methods.

I won this award because of the impact my research into glycans had on cancer, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and vaccines - my research can help improve human well-being. 

A life dedicated to the pursuit of research

CommonWealth: Why can your research into glycans also be applied to broad-acting coronavirus vaccines?

Wong: The novel coronavirus exploits the human glycosylation mechanism. Imagine the virus as wearing a ‘sugar coat’ made of glycans to cover up its less mutable and weaker areas in order to better evade the body’s immune system. When designing a vaccine, we have to consider that the virus’ protein is hiding beneath this ‘sugar coat.’ If we remove these glycans - the ‘sugar coat’ - the immune system is better able to recognize the virus, and can generate more effective antibodies and T-cell responses. 

Because most of what the glycans cover are the parts of the virus less prone to mutation, this kind of vaccine is effective against different coronavirus variants and mutations, and as such can be considered a broadly protective vaccine. It has not yet been tested against the Omicron variant, but as it’s effective against the Indian Delta variant I believe it should be effective against Omicron, it’s just a question of how strong the protection is. 

The research center led by Wong stood out for their COVID-19 vaccine (Source: Pei-Yin Hsieh)

CommonWealth: Why have you spent your life focussing on glycan research?

Wong: To pursue a career in research, one must be interested in and curious about uncovering the unknown.  Persistence leads to big discoveries. I've studied carbohydrates for my whole life. At National Taiwan University, I studied protein chemistry with professor Guang-chan Wang (王光燦), and then, because I was really interested in enzyme reactions, I went to MIT for further study. There, thanks to the guidance of my mentor, I entered the field of glycoscience, which is a new field in chemistry.

The presence of Wong in the field of science research traces back to 1981 at MIT

At first, I was curious as to why glycans were present everywhere - the glycans in red blood cells determine blood type, for example. I’ve often heard that blood type determines personality - so how can glycans determine your personality?

My sense of curiosity has always kept me going. I wanted to understand the origin of antibodies, and what role glycans actually play.

Nowadays, there is too much information. Many young people’s interests are constantly changing, but if you want to make a scientific breakthrough, you have to keep pursuing the unknown; lock onto a subject and keep studying it without getting distracted.

I was Professor Guang-chan Wang’s (王光燦) assistant for eight years. Not many people stay for that long, but I worked with him for 8 years and then went abroad. When I received my Master’s degree, my oral exam assessor was my classmate, who’d already become a professor. That made me realize I had fallen behind, and so I immediately went abroad for my PhD.

Wong began his journey in the research field through the opportunity offered by Guang-chan Wang (left)

Commonwealth: Your time in education seems to have gone very smoothly, did you ever encounter any setbacks?

Wong: I was born in Yizhu Township, Chiayi, a very rural area without any cram schools. 

My time at the National Tainan First Senior High School left a very strong impression on me. When I was in senior year, I was admitted to National Tsing Hua University, but the people around me had all been admitted into the National Taiwan University College of Medicine. Lots of people said I could definitely get into the NTU College of Medicine too, so in senior year I changed my study from engineering to life science. However, in the end my biology exam was a complete mess, so I didn’t manage to get into the College of Medicine. This was my first setback. I went on to study chemistry, because I liked it.

The second setback I faced was being an assistant for 8 years, and then realizing my oral test examiner was my university classmate.

The third setback was that tumble is the OBI Pharma case.

CommonWealth: When you were in America you worked on "Programmed Polysaccharide Synthesis Technology" （a programmable one-pot chemical synthesis method), which enabled a dramatic increase in the efficiency of glycan synthesis. How did this idea come about?  

Wong:  That invention made me famous, but it wasn’t me that created it - it was my student. He created a lot of the important programming that Apple uses now. He chose me to be his supervisor, but at that time all his experiments failed, and in his fourth year he didn’t want to continue studying this topic. I just asked him: these glycan compounds have different reaction rates, is there a way to collate them?

He said he could create a program to do it. So, he took the lab notebooks home, and a week later he told me he had written an automated program. I didn’t understand it at all, but he told me it didn’t matter, we just needed to input the sequence of the glycans we wanted to make into the computer, and then after the different elements were mixed, the product would be ready. 

CommonWealth: At that time, you were famous in the United States. So why did you decide to come back to Taiwan?

Wong: President [of Academia Sinica] Yuan-tseh Lee (李遠哲) asked me to come back. He is my idol, but I never listened to him. Three years later, I was moved because he came back and did a lot of things. He really cares about society.

At that time, I had been invited by the Japanese government to do some research on glycans. President Lee was on the advisory board of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Japan, and he said “You want to help Japan, but it would be better to help Taiwan.” So, I came back as a guest of the Academia Sinica Institute of Chemistry.

Yuan-tseh Lee (left) invited Wong to come back Taiwan (Source: Chi-Huey Wong)

CommonWealth: You went from an assistant to the president of Academia Sinica. How did you feel at that time?

After I stepped down from the role, the secretary said that I could retire after 15 years of service, and I realized that those 8 years were very precious. I’m also the first person to start from the very bottom and then become president of Academia Sinica. 

Commonwealth: Why did you draft and promote the "Biotechnology and New Drug Industry Development Act" and revise the "Basic Law of Science and Technology" during your term as president?

Wong: Because I did not come back to do research. When Yuan-tseh Lee (李遠哲) enlisted me to come back to Taiwan, he said very clearly that he thought Taiwan needed help. Research aside, there was a need to work out how to make research outcomes genuinely helpful to the biotechnology industry.

I thought of the 1980 US Bayh-Dole Act. The biotechnology industry only existed in the US, so in 2003 Chi-Ming Liang (梁啟銘) and I wrote biotechnology ordinances based on the Bayh-Dole Act, but no one took any notice. 

Furthermore, the Genomics Research Center at Academia Sinica has an incubation center which focuses on technology transfer, but technology transfer is illegal. You also can’t serve as a member of industry advisory boards. So, I thought it was quite strange that I had to come back as the director of the Genomics Research Center. 

Afterwards, I used my position as president to promote these transfers, because the main purpose of me coming back was to help the biotechnology industry, and educate more students. If there’s no industry, there’s no way to advance. This law allows you to sit on advisory boards, and also offers a 35% tax deduction for investment in research and development, to encourage the research and development of high end medical materials and new pharmaceuticals. 

Persevere until the day when the truth comes to light

CommonWealth: What are your thoughts regarding your experience with the OBI Pharma lawsuit.

Wong: Of course I was disappointed at first, but I would never do anything illegal or immoral. I believe in the Taiwanese justice system. 

But the state was watching me, so my feelings at the time must have had some issues. I was always asking around, if there was a wrong stamp or something, and there wasn’t, but there was no way to prove it completely. Because no one was willing to look carefully at the details at that time, we had to go to court to clear up the situation.

During those two years, I devoted myself to research. So those two years were the most productive years of my life. I received the Welch Award in 2016, but because I couldn’t go abroad, the award was canceled. Right at the beginning, I was really confused, but within two months I had clarified what was going on, and it didn’t affect me. All that was left was to face it.

Us scientists know how to distinguish between right and wrong. If I was accused of something I didn’t do, I’m going to get to the heart of the matter no matter what, and will persevere until the day when everything has been completely clarified. 

That period of time allowed me to see people more clearly, I’ve met all sorts of people. In my opinion, being able to see the real world more clearly is a strength.

CommonWealth: What direction do you want to go in now?

Wong: The most difficult area to breakthrough is cancer, using a vaccine to eradicate cancer. There are also neurodegenerative diseases, because there are no drugs to treat Alzheimer’s. This is where I hope to make a breakthrough. Of course, I am also looking forward to the development of the biotechnology industry, as then I will accept the position of president of the Institute for Biotechnology and Medicine Industry.

Facilitating dialogue between the ICT and medical treatment industries

CommonWealth: Taiwan’s information and communication (ICT) industry is strong. As the president of the Academic Sinica Genomics Research Center, what’s your opinion on the opportunities available for Taiwan in this area?

Wong: This presents a huge opportunity for Taiwan, as both our ICT and healthcare industries are world leaders, but these two industries rarely interact with each other. Because of this, the Genomics Research Center wants to create a platform for dialogue, and encourage the two industries to communicate. 

What was the impact of sequencing the human genome? The concept of personalized and precision medicine took shape at that time because the sequence of all 3 billion base pairs had been made clear. Nowadays, you can understand someone’s entire genome for just 1000 USD. Taiwan’s semiconductor technology played a significant role in this development. 

The scale of the health industry is enormous. Currently, it’s worth around 12 trillion USD, and is predicted to reach around 15 trillion USD by 2030, meaning the industry would account for around 12% of global GDP. 

Within this, biotechnology and pharmaceutical manufacturing account for two trillion USD, medical materials account for 600 billion USD, and this will expand to preventative medicine and testing. ICT will certainly enter the industry, making use of big data processing to increase precision. Of course AI will also enter the industry. 

I am optimistic that if the ICT and medical industries can work together, new products will be released, leading the world in making new standards. 

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Translated by Elizabeth Frost
Uploade by Ian Huang