Leading scientist receives highest national honour

Wang Zhenyi, a world-renowned scientist whose breakthrough in the field of

The treatment of leukemia has saved hundreds of thousands of lives at home and abroad and has been awarded China's highest honor.

According to an order signed by President Xi Jinping on Friday, Wang is among four notable figures awarded the Medal of the Republic, the country's highest honor.

In 1986, Wang was the world's first medical scientist to convert cancer cells from leukemia patients into normal cells in clinical practice, a treatment that significantly improved the remission rate of the highly fatal type of blood cancer, acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), and has been used in many other countries and regions, including Europe, Japan, the United States, Italy, Australia and Cuba.

“Looking back, I focused on one thing throughout my career: being responsible for patients,” said Wang, 99, a full professor at Shanghai Ruijin Hospital and an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

When he started his medical career, he witnessed patients with leukemia, especially APL, which cost them their lives within six months in 90% of cases.

As a result, Wang, who later became the only doctor to date among the recipients of China's highest scientific honor, the State Science and Technology Outstanding Award, made conquering the disease his life's goal.

His research in this area began in 1979, and in 1986 he prescribed the drug, all-trans-reinoic acid (ATRA), which he had discovered to treat patients with APL, to a 5-year-old girl with the disease who was in critical condition.

The girl took the medicine for a week and her condition improved. She was completely cured after a month.

This case was widely recognized as the world's first case putting into practice the theory of induced differentiation of leukemia cells.

Furthermore, the woman is still alive and well today.

Wang and his team treated a total of 24 patients in this way over the course of a year, and all went into complete remission.

The results were then published in a paper that immediately caused a worldwide sensation.

Wang, whose therapy was quickly promoted across China, then focused on pricing the drug to make it affordable for patients and their families.

He decided to drop the patent application and do his best to reduce the price of the drug.

When the drug was first launched on the domestic market more than three decades ago, the price of a box of 10 capsules was about 11 yuan ($1.55).

Today, a box of this drug costs 290 yuan and it is included in the national list of reimbursed drugs. Other similar treatments for tumors cost more than 20,000 yuan.

“I never calculated how much I could personally gain from developing the drug. My only hope was to save more patients,” Wang said.

Years later, Wang and his students Chen Zhu and Chen Saijuan proposed the treatment method of ATRA combined with arsenic trioxide, a compound in traditional Chinese medicine, increasing the five-year survival rate of APL, which was once considered the most dangerous type of leukemia, from 10% in 1978 to over 95%, making it the world's first curable leukemia.

Some foreign media hailed this treatment method as the “Shanghai Plan” and listed it as “one of the eight major contributions of New China to the world medical field”, along with the invention of qinghaosu, or artemisinin.

Chen Zhu, former Minister of Health, said: “Wang is not only our teacher, but also a role model who deserves our respect throughout his life for his scientific mind, superb medical skills, teaching ethics and personality.”

zhouwenting@chinadaily.com.cn

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