At 11:30 am on November 1st, 2022, Professor Nieng Yan, wearing a pair of white shoes, gracefully walked onto the stage of the 2022 Shenzhen Global Innovation Talent Forum. The large screen behind her shows “There and Back Again”.
There and Back Again
After working at Princeton University for five years, she returned to China and came to Shenzhen to be the first president of a brand-new medical academy – Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation -- that was written into the Central Government's "Support for Shenzhen's Construction of a Pilot Demonstration Zone":
Why did she come back? Why Shenzhen? The answers are revealed in the following speech:
There and Back Again
November 1, 2022
Hello everyone, I am Nieng Yan!
It is an honour to speak with all of you at the Shenzhen Global Innovation Talent Forum.
On November 1st, 2017, my lab at Princeton University officially opened. In a blink of the eye, it has been five years.
The moment I walked out of the Tsinghua campus as an undergraduate, I felt reluctant to leave -- dreaming that I might someday be invited back to Tsinghua as a professor. This dream surprisingly came true 10 years earlier than expected. In 2007, when I left Princeton University to return to China to fulfill this dream, I felt a similar reluctance in the pursuit of my second career dream: that maybe after I accomplish world-renowned achievements in my fifties, I could be invited back to work at Princeton University. To my surprise, my second dream came true 10 years earlier than expected as well.
So, what is my next dream?
Exploring possibilities in scientific research is where my passion lies, and it is the underlying color of my life. Just like a few of my cross-generational friends stated, I will persist until the very end of my life. This is not just a dream, but a daily routine.
Looking inward, I must confess that my achievements today are not necessarily because I am smarter or more hard-working than others. To a great extent, it is because I have been very lucky – finding myself to be in the most conducive environment for doing research over the past 20 years. I have been fortunate enough to attract a large number of intelligent and capable PhD students and postdoctoral fellows. I have been lucky enough to receive funding that prioritizes people-centric values. This has allowed me to explore a world of science that interests me without constraints.
I hope to pass along this luck to extend it to more young people through a gesture of kindness, so that they can continue to enjoy the same luck and rely on their inner driving force rather than various external temptationsin their unabated exploration of their potentialand the original discoveries that are to follow.
Yes, this has been my dream since 2017.
It is precisely because of this intention that in recent years I have increasingly felt the sense of achievement in mentoring students in the laboratory, seeing generation after generation of young people expand their own horizons and make more achievements -- nurturing the next generation of scientists. The sense of accomplishment in passing on knowledge has surpassed my own joy in making scientific breakthroughs.
My own experience has also confirmed the life journey described in the book:
The first stage is absorption, where we strive to learn and enrich ourselves. The second stage is proof, where we work hard to gain recognition. The third stage is output, where we pass on what we have learned to others, help others, and support others.
After accumulating for several decades, I have the confidence to actively enter the third stage of my life, which is to build a platform to support more excellent scholars, to respond to human health challenges, to explore challenging biomedical problems, to make original breakthroughs, and to give back to society.
Shenzhen gave me the offer I needed. Once again, I strongly felt the excitement and joy of moving towards my dreams!
So, I have quickly submitted my resignation to Princeton University, and have made arrangements for the existing members of my laboratory. I will soon return to China full-time to assist in the creation of a new research and development institution in Shenzhen that integrates multiple functions such as scientific research, transformation, funding support and student training. It will be called the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation, known simply by its acronym: SMART.
When it comes to this, you may say, “Professor Yan! Stop! Aren't you doing fundamental research? Does your research have anything to do with medicine? In fact, modern medicine has gone beyond the narrow mode of diagnosis, prescription, and surgery. It has become socomplex that it requires interdisciplinary work in biology, chemistry, materials science, mechanics, electronics, artificial intelligence, and other fields.
Let me share a research story that will soon be published in the journal Cell.
In 2013, a "miracle drug" called Sofosbuvir emerged which was able to treat hepatitis C. In 2014, Sofosbuvir generated sales of 10.2 billion US dollars, becoming the second best-selling drug globally that year. However, in 2015, the US FDA issued a safety warning advising against taking Sofosbuvir and the commonly used drug amiodarone for treating irregular heartbeat together, as this may cause severe bradycardia and even death. How did this happen? Pharmaceutical researchers conducted a systematic study and the initial evidence indicated that the two drugs may interact with the calcium channel that controls heart rhythm, but this is only an educated guess.
At this point, they found us through reading the literature and discovered that we were studying the interaction between calcium ion channels and various drug molecules. We happened to notice this phenomenon while reading literature and were in the process of purifying relevant calcium ion channel proteins.
In short, this was a successful collaboration. We applied these two drugs separately or together to calcium ion channels, and then used cryo-electron microscopy to obtain their three-dimensional structures, clearly showing the positions of each carbon atom, phosphorus atom, nitrogen atom, etc. As a result, the answer was unexpected: Sofosbuvir, which was not supposed to affect calcium ion channels, was unexpectedly pulled into the channel by the other drug, blocking the flow of calcium ions and thereby inhibiting the release of electrical signals that control heartbeats.
This discovery in structural biology is significant to the pharmaceutical industry, as it is the first time two commonly used drugs have been found to use proteins as scaffolds, directly affecting the normal function of the protein shoulder by shoulders. Building on this finding, we are conducting more research on drug-drug and drug-hormone interactions, hoping to provide more inspiration for drug development and disease treatment.
Although I started with fundamental research, I frequently receive inquiries from doctors around the world. Over the past decade, we have collaborated with one or two international pharmaceutical companies at any given time. Close cooperation between the fields of biology, medicine, and pharmaceuticals has allowed us to not only understand the causes of diseases, but also to develop targeted pharmaceuticalalsmore effectively. The mission of SMART is to establish connections between patients, laboratories, pharmaceutical companies, and back to the patients again.
We hope that in SMART, we not only generate innovative research breakthroughs, but also that we establish a scientific mechanism that allows professionals to focus on their specialties and to ensure that researchers can concentrate on academic research and that their results can be effectively translated.
Why choose Shenzhen? Because Shenzhen is young and vibrant. Everything is possible here!
At the beginning, I had concerns about the city because in Shenzhen, everyone is too hardworking! Some say Shenzhen is the capital of “involution,” the city of internal competition. Being too busy all the time could reduce the space for dreams and inspiration, which might hinder innovation as a result. However, when I came here and spent weekends climbing Ma Luan Mountain, taking boats on the Maozhou River and enjoying fragrant coffee with exquisite desserts while reading at Jingui Natural Book House, I beheld the livable aspect of Shenzhen.
I agree more with another nickname of Shenzhen: City of Dreams.
My third dream is that through the joint efforts of our generation and several generations, Shenzhen will occupy an important place in the world's biopharmaceutical map in ten or twenty years. When people talk about the biopharmaceutical Greater Bay Area, they will think of Shenzen first!
I want to take this opportunity to extend an invitation from SMART to you:
Join us. Be SMARTer!
Welcoming talents from all over the world to join Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation.
Let's build Shenzhen into a hub of biopharmaceuticals!
Please send your resumé to
talent@smart.org.cn
Introduction of Professor Nieng Yan
Nieng Yan, born in November 1977 in Zhangqiu, Shandong, was appointed as a professor and PhD supervisor at the School of Medicine, Tsinghua University in 2007. She was granted tenure in 2012 and became a Bayer professor in 2013. In 2017, she was appointed as the first Shirley Tilghman Endowed Chair Professor at Princeton University.
Her research focuses primarily on the study of the structure and mechanism of transmembrane transport proteins. She in known internationally for her role in thethe atomic resolution structures of a series of important transmembrane proteins that have physiological and pathological significance, including human glucose transporter, eukaryotic voltage-gated sodium ion channel, and calcium ion channel. Her findings provide a molecular basis for understanding the pathogenesis of related diseases and drug development. Since 2009, as a corresponding or co-corresponding author, Nieng Yan has published nearly 80 academic research papers. Among them, 33 are in Cell, Nature, and Science.
Nieng Yan received the Science/AAAS and GE Healthcare Young Scientist Award (North America) in 2005; the first HHMI International Early Career Scientist Award and the China Outstanding Young Female Scientist Award in 2012; the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Award for Scientific and Technological Progress in 2014; the International Union of Pure and Applied Biophysics Young Investigator Award and the Theophilus Redwood Lectureship (terminated in 2018) in 2015; the first Alexander Cruickshank speaker from mainland China at the Gordon Research Conference in 2016; the FAOBMB Excellent Research Award in 2018; the international Women in Science Award presented by the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel in 2019; and the Anatrace Membrane Protein Research Award presented by the International Biophysics Association in 2021.
On April 30th, 2019, Nieng Yan was elected as a foreign academician of the National Academy of Sciences in United States. On April 22th, 2021, she was elected as a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
