William X. Wang

William X. Wang
Born Wang Xiaocun (王小村), the king of small village
6 June 1958
Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China
Residence Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Nationality US
Fields Molecular Biology
Immunology
Neurology
Psychology
Biomedical Engineering
Institutions President of Pharmacom Corporation
Alma mater Wuhan University
Columbia University
University of Oxford

William X. Wang (Chinese: 王小村, pinyin: wáng xiǎo cūn) (born: June 6, 1958) is a Chinese American scientist and entrepreneur.

Early life

Wang was born in Wuhan, a metropolitan lying at the intersection of the middle reaches of the Yangtze and Han River (Hanshui) in Central China. During his childhood he lived in Hanchuan, a small town by the north bank of the Han River and 60 kilometers away from downtown Wuhan.

Wang was 15 years old when he wrote and submitted his first scientific paper to the Chinese Academy of Science Institute of Brain Research. The paper endeavored to explore the biological nature and physical composition of human intelligence. To apply his idea of Darwinian evolutionary theory, he gathered first-hand data from hundreds of children and adults by interviewing them and measuring profiles of their foreheads. Zhang Xiangtong, the director of the institute as well as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Science responded Wang a hand-written letter with high praise and encouragement, and the letter became Wang’s treasure of lifetime and an invaluable inspiration that led him to the future career of science.

In China during the ten years of the Great Cultural Revolution, between 1966 and 1976, most of the universities and colleges were shut down, and higher education was abolished. In 1977 when Deng Xiaoping (邓小平) overturned the old policies, the paralyzed high education system was restarted and millions of young people were encouraged to prepare for the National Higher Education Entrance Examination. At this time, Wang was 19. Two weeks before the national examination, he was still working in the remote countryside as a farmer because at that time all high school graduates had to work at farms for at least two years before they were allowed to return to their home town.

University

In December 1977, over six million applicants from all over the country participated in the national examination, which had been overdue for more than ten years. Two months later, one twentieth of them were accepted by a handful of universities, and Wang was one of those lucky ones. He was selected by Wuhan University, which was one of the top five universities at that time in China.

Wang had not much opportunity to study mathematics, physics and chemistry in the ten years prior to the national examination since such subjects at elemental, junior or high school either were not taught or inadequate as result of countless political movements. Wang was obliged to choose social sciences as his subject for the national entrance examination. So history became his first major. Ancient Greece & Ancient Rome, taught by Wu Yujin (吴于廑), and Romance of Three Kingdoms, taught by Tang Changru (唐长孺), were a few of the classes that he had greatly enjoyed during his freshman and sophomore years.

Besides evolutionary theory and human intelligence, some of interdisciplinary junctions between genealogy, human genetics, psychology, sociology and geopolitics, also captivated Wang and became his focus during first his first two college years. He studied family trees using his own family as the subject and traced the family history even back to one thousand years. The ancestor on Wang’s father side was descended from Nurhaci (努尔哈赤), the first emperor of Qing Dynasty(清朝); and originated from one of eight Qing’s royal tribals called “Xianghuang Banner” (镶黄旗), a nationality called Qing (清) that used to be nomads in Northern China before having crossed over the Great Wall and conquested the much more advanced Han nationality in 1644. In the late Southern Song dynasty (南宋) the ancestor on Wang’s mother side (surnamed Lin(林姓), a clan of Han nationality that lived in Southern China), joined the troop led by Wen Tianxiang (文天祥), Lu Xiufu (陆秀夫) and Zhang Shijie (张世杰) at the Yaishan Battle (崖山之役) fought against Mongols led by Kublai Khan (忽必烈) in 1279. In the first half of the 20th century, three elders, Lin Yun-Gai (林云陔), Lin Bai-Sheng (林柏生), and Lin Li-Ru (林励儒), who were all from Wang’s mother side (Lin), but with distinct political views from each other, respectively served as minister-level officer in the Chiang Kaishek (蒋介石) administration, in the Wang Chingwei (汪精卫) regime, and in the Mao Zedong (毛泽东) government. In his second scientific paper, Wang presented himself as a chimera resulting from the cultural integration and genetic merge between two unique nationalities, one of which has been dominating Northern China as nomads for centuries, and the other of which has been living in Southern China as a highly civilized group for over one thousand years. Later Wang presented his theory as an article titled Genetic shift, gene fusion and hybrid advantage resulted from the immigration and re-settlement of grouped clans coming from distinctive geographic territories induced by historical events or wars. Shi Quan (石泉), a leading historical geographer, and Yu Xianjue (余先觉), a well-known human geneticist, both taught at the university then, reviewed the paper with great interest and pointed out its weakness from their different perspectives.

After two years of study at the university, Wang reached a pinnacle of his college career by delivering his third scientific paper, which described how the language that is composed and delivered by a brain, acts in turn to stimulate, promote, optimize and advance the brain, when this “interaction” is viewed from the perspective of the evolution of human intelligence. Antecedents to the thoughts reflected in the third paper can be found in the second paper and even in his first paper seven years before. The paper was reviewed by Wu Xizai (吴熙载), a distinguished professor in the field. Wu made a strong recommendation to the president of the university, Liu Daoyu (刘道玉), and asked the president as a favor, to allow Wang to change his major. Twenty days after Wang submitted his paper, which was on January 11, 1980, Wang became the first student in the nation and in the history of the modern Chinese higher education, to be allowed by Chinese Ministry of Education to switch from a major in social sciences – history, to be a major in natural sciences - biology. Wang's paper was a significant incident in the history of Chinese education and also changed his goals in life.

In earlier 1980s, scholars from leading universities and research institutions in China were fascinated with phenomenon called “special human body functions” (人体特异功能), a number of adults and children had claimed they have capabilities of “reading” a certain Chinese characters that were written in a folded paper through ears or hands. Brain has been Wang’s favour subject and Freud has also been inspiring him for years. Exploring this phonomenon, became a new extension of his imgination. He organized a team that including freshman, graduate students and even junior faculty members, and devoted a large portion of his effort on the project. Wang tried design experimental systems that would ascertain how acquisition of information by means external to the basic limiting assumptions of science could have been possible. Wang realized that it was extremely difficult to replicate such extraordinary experiences under controlled scientific conditions. Several Chinese leading scholars, Tsien Hsue-shen (钱学森), specialized on cybernetics, Wei Nengrun (魏能润), specialized on otolaryngology, and Yu Guangyuan (于光远), specialized on humanities, had become strong supporters on those investigations, and because that, a national debate even had been triggered then. Wang in 1981 actually founded first group on somatic science in China – Wuhan University Society of Special Human Body Functions, which used to have over 200 members during 1980-1982.

In 1983, during his fourth college year as a student of biology, Wang drafted his fourth scientific paper, which was intended to explore a four possible origin for cancer, which Wang categorized as: 1) environmentally “at the cellular level” where cancer could be induced by exogenous factors such as a contaminating entity, diary composition, life behavior and so on; 2) biologically “at the molecule level” due to variances of DNA structure, RNA structure, and protein structure; 3) chemically “at the atomic level” resulted from chemical bonds, residues positions and configurations; and 4) intrinsically “at the subatomic level”. The paper is titled as self-unwinding of DNA caused by nitrogen proton’s perturbation: a possible relationship of the activation of proto-oncogenes and the intrinsic instability of DNA duplex, and three years late in 1986 Wang was invited to give a talk at the 14th International Cancer Congress in Budapest based on the original idea. Wang presented his theory at the conference: cancers can be induced not only environmentally, biologically, chemically, but intrinsically at cellular, molecular, atomic level and even at the subatomic level. He believed that modern science and technologies, would never be able to fully control, completely stop or fundamentally eliminate the origin and development of cancers, because of the fourth cause, and the nature of the fourth cause.

To the United States

Creative thought and pioneering work on the intrinsic instability of DNA duplex has created controversy among scientists in the related field. Over ten academicians of Chinese Academy of Science including Tang Aoqing (唐敖庆), Liang Xiaotian (梁晓天), Liang Zhiquan (梁植权), Zou Chenglu (邹承鲁), Gao Shangyin (高尚荫), etc., have either liked, supported or challenged Wang’s determination and predication. The Chinese Central Television has even made a special program called “Talents in Challenge” of the story and broadcast it three times nationwide. It had also bought him great opportunities: Chinese Academy of Sciences awarded him a research grant for encouraging the further research; a leading scholar from Cambridge University offered him a Ph.D. scholarship; and several US universities generously offered him pre- or postdoctoral fellowships. William made a wise choice: go to the United States. On December 24, 1987, just one day before Christmas, Wang was granted an F-1 visa from the US embassy at Beijing, and flew over the Pacific on January 11, 1988.

Phase of learning

Uptown Manhattan Campus of Columbia University is the place where Wang has spent his first four years in the United States. From 1988 to 1992, Wang undertook Ph.D. studies in immunology at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons. One unique feature of our immune system is the level of specificity in antigen recognition: a specific antigen binds to the T-cell receptor, the receptor recognizes it, and triggers an immune response. Dr. Ned S. Braustein directed his work on identifying and mapping the sequences in both class II major histocompatibility complex α- and β-chains that contribute to the binding of the superantigen toxic shock syndrome toxic I. Wang performed good work on those innovative and intriguing research subjects and also demonstrated the potential and capability for being a leading scientist in future. On January 11, 1992, four year after he arrived the country, Wang was granted for US Permanent Residency (towards to US citizenship five years late) by US Department of State, as the 1st priority called “exceptional foreign talent” initially recommended by Dr. Isidore S. Edelman, a member of US National Academy of Science taught at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons. A few weeks before leaving Columbia University, Wang received two offers of postdoctoral fellowships from two leading institutions after presentations were being made: Harvard University Department of Biochemistry and NIH National Institute of Mental Health. Facing a difficult choice, Wang recalled a moment that were many years ago, when he was 15, he was so fascinated by the mystery of the compactness and complexity of human brain, and committed himself into that sort of pioneering and exciting work—exploring the neural network puzzle of human brain. So, he chose NIH for his next step.

In January 1992, Wang started his postdoctoral studies on Alzheimer's disease at the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health. With the guidance from Dr. David M. Jacobowitz he investigated the catalytic pattern of chymotrypsin in CNS and SERM compounds’ molecular and cellular mechanism in both the normal brain and the brain affected by neurodegenerative disease. Based on those genomic and proteomic approaches, as the first person in the world, Wang has proven the presence of chymotrypsin-like protease in peripheral organs. Although no definitive evidence for the synthesis of this enzyme in tissue other than the pancreas is available, identified potential activities of chymotrypsin-like protease in the human cerebral cortex where has potential Alzheimer's disease.

From 1994 to 1995, during the period of working at ICRF unit of clinical oncology at University of Oxford Institute of Molecular Medicine, which led by Sir Walter Bodmer and Dr. Adrian L. Harris, William has performed a variety of experiments: establishing yeast based two-hybrid system and transgenic animal model; localizing, cloning and characterizing receptor tyrosine kinase gene; constructing chimerical receptors; generating stable-transfectants; and mapping signal transduction pathways based on proteomic profiling. The work has led the isolation and characterization of an ovarian-cancer associated receptor protein kinase and its ligand, and thus Wang became a member of the first team of scientists who identified novel receptor tyrosine kinase genes in human ovarian cancer cells.

In his research at Cleveland Clinic as an assistant professor in 1996, Wang has established a transgenic mouse model and successfully demonstrated interferon’s potential for therapeutic intervention against cancer.

Phase of trials

After near ten years doing intensive research at prestigious world-class institutions, Wang has changed his life path again. He switched himself from academic to industry, from basic science to high tech, and from learning to invention. To him, the change wasn’t simply for job, money and making living, but for experience of tool-management, knowledge of component-integration, and execution of systems engineering.

In 1997, Wang went to Japan and spent a few months of working at Roche’s laboratory located in Tsukuba as a principal investigator. There he has put his effort to identify a novel ligand to the kinase receptor by using integrated High-throughput screening systems that support mapping of docking (molecular) hits and screening of lead compounds. As principal software engineer and data architect working at Oracle Corporation in 1998-1999, Wang has instrumentally engaged himself on design of the Oracle Clinic Database – one of the most powerful data management systems in medicine, based on relational and object-oriented technologies; and development of an administrative console of healthcare system that extends UI to Oracle database with integrated technologies of XML, HTML, PL/SQL, JavaBeans, JSP and Java. As program director working at Eli Lilly & Company in 2000-2001, Wang led a multidisciplinary research team consisting of pharmaceutical scientists, bioinformatics scientists, software engineers, and validation specialists, in development of the data mining system that sorts, edits, visualizes and reports data generated from target-identification, preclinical research and clinical trials phases, and the pharmacogenomic data system that supports annotation required for analyzing inter-individual variation and determining genetic polymorphism by implementing statistical algorithms. As vice president of bioinformatics working at Integrated DNA Technologies Inc. in 2002, Wang led a team working on developing genomic match engine which can perform similarity searches, uniqueness determination, motif indication, contig assembly, multi-sequence alignment, and automatic sequence loading.

Phase of practice

At age 15 as a teenager, Wang was fascinated of the labyrinth of brain though it was not more than kind of imagination; at age 22 as a college senior at Wuhan University, Wang has one step further for getting close to entrance of the puzzle by proposing a hypothesis that how the human intelligence could be developed, promoted and advanced; at age 32 as a scientist on brain research in NIH, Wang found a place where he was able to put theoretical concepts of human brain on top of a modern laboratory bench; at age 44 as an inventor and entrepreneur through establishing Pharmacom Microelectronics in 2002, Wang eventually puts his foot at a platform in which he can convert the experimental work to be workable models or real machines, which he called Biochip-based Microsystems

At Wang’s perspective, grouped sensing systems can be simulated to have the most important features and functions of human neural system. It is embodied from following four aspects: i) in the way that the distinct sensing terminals synapses are designed to response to stimuli such as sound, light, electronic, temperature, odor, taste or others respectively and deliver the signals to the centre control point (brain) of the sensing system; ii) in the components that built in the sensing system have their mirror entities in an neuron such as receptive zone, trigger zone, conducting zone, and output zone; iii) in the network that implemented in the sensing system to perform crosstalk among multiple sensing pathways just like what happened in the complex of neural fibers; iv) in the two-way signaling delivery that utilized by the sensing system to transfer input signals from downstream ("dendrite" and "axon" of the sensing system) to upstream ("cortex" of the sensing system) and then deliver output message from the upstream to the downstream based on implementing microarrays at terminals of the sensing system and grouping signaling transfer channels as “cord of neural fibers”.

Since Pharmacom was established in 2002, Wang’s attention has been focusing on developing smaller-sized screening, detecting and interpreting systems with faster response, lower cost and higher sensitivity. A series of instruments are designed to be able to perform real-time detection on biomarkers of infectious diseases (e.g. West Niles virus, Mad Cow Disease, AIDS, SARS); signature molecules of pathogens (e.g. Escherichia coli O157:H7); contaminates of air and water; and epidemic factors of allergies(e.g. Flu, Asthma). They undertake all steps in a streamlined analysis from raw sample collection, optional sample separation, captured target identification, specific confirmation triggering and remote reporting.

Wang currently serves as Chairman, President and CEO of Pharmacom Corporation, an Iowa City-headquartered biotech company, consisted of fifteen subordinate companies operated at United States, Japan, China, Czech Republic, Italy and Finland respectively. The business mainly involves developing portable/implantable biochip-based microsystems for monitory, detection, diagnosis and therapy, and producing organic products that naturally extracted from animal organ or plant portion for skincare, energy-enhance, impotency-improvement, cancer-prevention, and diabetes-cure.

Wang is currently a lecture professor of Qingdao Agricultural University Pharmacom College of Biomedical Engineering. During 2010, Wang served as an adjunct professor of biomedical engineering at The University of Iowa College of Engineering.

Wang intends to create a super chain called “education-research-manufacture”. The chain consists of three master pieces: “education” on life science and biomedical engineering; “research” on microsystem-related subjects including genomics, proteomics, microarray, microfluidics and microfabrication, and “manufacture” of chip-driven microsystems for monitory, detection, diagnosis and therapy.

Note on publications and patents

Wang has authored a number of scientific papers in the fields of human genomics, immunology, protein chemistry and neuroscience, and holds eighteen U.S. patents or provisional patents for genomics software and biosensing devices.

Residence

Wang and his family reside in a national registered historical home in the center of Iowa City, Iowa. The Clark House was built by the first governor of the State of Iowa, Robert Lucas (governor)’s family during the middle of the 19th century. Over the last 150 years, only five families had lived in this four-story house prior to the Wang family’s residency. The second resident was Mr. Adesida Clark, a grandson of Abraham Clark, a co-signer of the Declaration of Independence. The third resident was a world-famous mathematician in the early 20th century, Richard P. Baker who educated at Oxford and the University of London, did advanced work on surface models at the University of Chicago and then taught at the University of Iowa during 1905-1937. The fourth resident was Raymond G. Bunge. During the middle 1950s he has developed the glycerol medium for preserving sperm, thus developing the first sperm bank in the world, paving the way for human artificial insemination, and the clinical area of infertility treatment was born due to his pioneering work.

Honors and awards

Professional memberships

Presentations

Publications

Patent applications

References

Further reading

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