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在我来公司前，都是我的老板自己来出席这个会议。当时他的手下有将近10 个人。可是他说他就是要等我这个刚从学校毕业的乳客来接这个方案。他认为刚毕业出来的学生，具有较强的化学基本常识。有了这些基本常识，稍微提醒一下，就应该解决问题的。其实，对组里面那些老美，一个个虎视眈眈，看着我这个老板空降而来。说实在话，我的老板那时也未必能指使动这些野心勃勃的手下。紧接着，我就是不断的做实验，印证我的解决方案的重复性。大概又花了两个月的时间，我的老板要我在一次例行的会议上宣布结果。这次他特地陪我出席。其实，当我报告完毕时，大家的反应极其平静。没有一句“扛鍋瑞蹄累训”。对我这个刚从学校毕业出来的年轻人说来很失望。我的老板安慰我，说我做的很好。不过，他也加上一句，这也是公司对你预计到的期望（就是 Meet Expectation）。他的意思是这是你分内应该完成的，不然我们干嘛雇你来啊。我的看法是老美觉得很没面子，一个案子拖了四年，被我这个初出茅庐的老中，一下子就给了了。如果是老美完成了，那个场面绝对是轰轰烈烈的。以后几年，看到一些我认为很平常的工作结束时，那些老美都是把自己吹得像个神仙似的。再加上旁边的吧弟起哄。然后紧跟着就是升级，加薪。好像刚从月球回来的一样。
紧接着，我的老板要我把整个的解决方案转告给先前的负责人。我约订了时间，就一五一十的把如何解决问题的过程，向这两位资深的同僚解说了。他们的反应也是非常冷淡。 其实后来想想，实在没有必要去走这一招。这已经不是他们的问题了，他们才不在乎你做出来没有。在工业界上班，就是这样。这个工作是你的，你就全权负责。不是你的，少去插秧。你做出来，你行，你罩得住。你来告诉我，是表示我们不如你了。这是他们的想法。其实，当我在向他们报告时，我是奉命行事。我就是再低调，也难免触动老美的优越感而使他们受到些许的伤害。这个谈话，后来变成了老板对我年终考核的一个批评。他告诉我，有人传话给他，认为我有点骄傲。我听了之后，笑了一笑对他说，是吗？我是很为自己能解决这个问题而骄傲的。另外，我顺水推舟的加上一句，我之所以这么快解决问题，也就是活用了老板要我注意的“化学平衡”啊（这就是拍马屁）。他笑了笑，不再多言。当然，这个评论只是口头上的提醒罢了。现在想起来，如果故事重演，怎么样我都会找借口不去向那两位老美报告我的结果的。
这个问题解决后，老板要我立刻申请专利。我找到了公司的专利律师。全部细节都一一呈上去。最后要我们去签名时，我发现我的老板居然是第一作者。我当时并没有说话，但是我知道，我的表情使我们那位加入公司不久的专利律师倒先开口了。他居然说，排名是按照姓氏的字母排列。我的老板居然不开口。我心想，我是个新进的员工，实在不好和我的老板去争这个排名。说实在话，我的老板那时手上已经有了许多专利，实在不应该与我来争这个排名。再说，这个案子，除了他很详细的为我介绍整个要解决的问题外，技术上都是我一个人解决的。这就是老美一般占人便宜的典型写照。一年以后，我的另外一个专利又出来了。这次，我特地交待那位律师，我是第一作者。大家对过去的排名，彼此心里有数（就是欺负我们老中），就不提了。最后，签名的时候，我是第一作者。这口气我算是出了。多少年后，我到南加州的一家有名的生物遗传公司访友，得知这位专利律师，居然是他们公司法律部门的头子，住在山顶上过着顶天立地的日子。
It is quite difficult to get IPO for biotek company now. If you don't have convincing solid phase II clinical trial data, there is no way you can have IPO. My former company in SH is truly exceptional and involving money games. This is not the first time. There was another drug company in HK went to public in HK and lost all the stock value eventually. But the IPO, they reap about 200 million. Good enough for the game they were playing. They know that game can not be duplicated again in HK, so they moved to oversea. When I have a chance, I will write a book to detail the whole pharmacutical development they are doing to make money without doing phamaceutical. Thank you for your reading and comments.
这个问题就是我当年的问题。我花了10年的时间终于搬到加州来了。我觉得，加州比较开放。而且对员工的保护也比较周全。我觉得，自己首先要有表现，但是该据理力争的时候，不要冲动，把自己的立场讲清楚。我们在加州就是把事件记录下来。以后我会在我的文中提到一些我碰到的情形。我想我们的下一代，因为他们在语言上，在文化上，都不会允许白人歧视的。这点，可以放心。我的两个孩子都是律师，他们就不认为在工作场合有这种歧视的事情发生。对于年青的朋友，我的劝告是把英文加强再加强。如果像我一样，继续在美国混下去，只有把英文弄好，另外就是多去了解美国的风土人情，看看美国报纸杂志等等。尽量加入他们的谈话，活动。自然而然，让他们觉得我们绝不比他们差。到了这个地步，我想就像我们的下一代，他们敢歧视吗？我们不歧视他们，就算他们祖上积德了。谢谢浏览及评论。
Thank you very much for your comments. I did manage to go to NIH webisite and found out one hebal mixture for RA. I am not getting into details of our discussion. Basically, my point of view is to understand the herbal mixture completely, namely the composition before moving into the clinical trials. That will be a very prolong and tedious jobs but not difficult. As far as I know, none of the clinical trials on hebal mixture has ted to FDA for clearance of clinical trial from industry (academic research IND is much easier to get FDA clearance). In this context, my concern for NIH clinical supply is the dosage preparation reproducibility and quality control of raw materials and final product. I mentioned in my earlier comment about the bioavailability of herbal medicine. We have to address this issue first before moving into clinical trials. If we cannot work out the formualation to get desired bioavailability, it will be a waste of all the resources to pursue the therapeutic efficacy.
For pharmaceutical development in China, it is chaos right now. We can see a lot of CRO setting up in China now. I am not sure we are thinking of pharmaceutical development. My approach will be to start API business first, to get DMF filing in US and marketing API in US. The next step will be generic drug and then moving into new drug development. The first two steps will build up credibility in front of FDA, establish financial strength, and use our extra resources to develop new therapeutics like herbal mixture or single hebal etc. It is not easy to convince the people in China. All what they are doing there is to seek wealth on a short term basis. Forget about the good drug, all what they are doing is marketing the medicine into hospital or distribtor to make money quickly. I am not sure you can do anything about it. Thank you very much for your comments and continuing reading.
But this is how most of the biotechs work, unfortunately: get one technology/molecule/patent, put some money in, register in FDA for IND, up to Phase II to show its efficacy if yes then out-license to big pharma, most of the company senior people can divest their stock shares to this timepoint and will be able to pack up and leave. This is the typical lifecycle of a startup biotech company.
这种事可能在大部分中国人身上都发生过，现在我想问的是我们该怎么办，我们该怎样在美国争取利益和尊重？最根本的是没有人在上面支持，撑腰。无论是政治还是学术，我们高层的人可能还不够strong , 就是有中国老板，对国人的压榨更甚于洋人。我们的第二代，第三代华裔有没有受到歧视，到哪里去了？他们是否有义务帮助第一代，象犹太人那样？我觉得我们应该培养，推举华人到美国高层，由他们再提携后人，我们的后代不能去中国化，要有民族荣誉感，为华裔社会服务。
The problem of health care in china is far more complicated than producing effective drugs. That is of course my personal view. The producing of effective drug is perhaps the second step to take after the government (let's live in hope) can sort out the ideological issue on public health. That is, it is the state's responsibility to give its people good health, like most of the European countries and in Australia and New Zealand. I am not sure about American, whether it is via the insurance company or state subsides. The primary role of public hospitals is to cure patients (with the government pays the bills), not the tool for someone (Foreign pharmaceutical companies or the joint-adventures, and various levels of administrations) to squeeze money out of the miserable patients. It comes more direct, as a matter of fact, the majority of the general public can not afford for being sick. This is a systematic problem to be addressed urgently.
About the effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine, there are two more reasons which may explain why the conclusion drawn from the literature is always negative. For a start, there is an issue how the test of efficiency was run, and whether the same test is really suitable for testing the effective of Chinese medicine, given the mechanisms behind can be quite different. As most people noticed, the Chinese medicine has the focus on curing the root of problem, instead of the symptoms. Thus, the observation time can be a lot longer for testing the Chinese medicine. The other reason is, there is also the slight chance the only paper which had passed the boring peer-review may be the ones only with the negative effects. This selective process in publications is common in other areas of science where the reviewers have certain bias.
By the way, is it the case in American that even the technical solutions are made during the employment time, the individuals can still claim for patents. The company who pays for the time of the employee has not right in this matter? That is interesting.
My point is, why waste resources on unproven "medicine"? Do we bear the responsibility to educate general population and Chinese administration to re-direct their resources and improve the nation's heath care?
My other ambition is to drive Amway out of China, sort of. It is ourageous to see Amway selling expensive Magnesium, Selenium etc etc to healthy people without proven benefits. Lots of trials show little benefits and toxicity of supplements. Amway basically is dead in the US and somehow make it big in China, pretty much like your boss, taking advantage of the lack of knowledge or ignorance of Chinese people.
I still believe the future of Chinese medicine relies on the active ingradients it contains. Ephedrine, vincristine were all extracted from plants.
My personal bias, the Shanghai work is doomed. I can almost bet it will not produce any drug approved by the FDA to market in the US. If it produces any drug that I can write on my preion, let me know and I send you a gift of your choice within $200. All they are doing is for marketing in China. Everything will sell well with an American flag in China.
Thank you very much for your reading and comments. Here are my answers to your questions.
A few random thoughts. I don't see a future for the Chinese herbal medince. All NIH (national institute of health) sponsored clinical trials are negative. Maybe the only way out for Chinese medicine is to identify an active ingradient.
There are several issues to be considered here. All the NIH clinical trials, I believe, is the single molecules derived from herbals. The identification of the active ingredient is not a problem at all and we are doing in China now. The question is whether the single molecule is sufficient to provide the desired efficacy as observed in the Fu Fang (复方). Of course, I do not rule out the possibility to find the efficacy in small molecules. Besides in herbal medicine, when we talked about the single molecule actually is a combination of similar type of compounds (i.e., not a single entity).
I believe the projects you worked in Shanghai was FDA approval for some herbal supplements, but not a "drug".To get FDA approval for a drug, you will need phase 1, 2 and 3 trials with the last 2 clinical and a post market analysis. I think it is a waste of money and resources to spend on herbal medicine with no proven effacacy.
The project is not dietary supplement, it is for therapeutic indications and treatments. For dietary supplement, you don’t have to go through FDA approval process but you do need to have CMC information ready in case that FDA requests the information when an adverse event reported. We all know that the medical response from herbal medicine is slow and this is due to the formulation technology. How many formulation scientists are willing to understand the herbal medicine to increase the bioavailability, none. This is the area we should focus if we really would like herbal medicine to achieve the efficacy as the other drugs.
Another thought, I feel sorry for your boss. She is a loser at least from a personal perspective. Somehow she found her niche to survive in this twisted Chinese society. I think your greatest asset, if you want to contribute to China, probably it is not your skills as a chemist, but the knowledege of American system, either in terms of management or personel evaluation. I think probably you should take a management position in your field instead.
Every company has different goals to accomplish. The reason I decided to join the company is to really pursue the Chinese herbal medicine as they originally promised. Later, I found out all what they are doing was trying to file two USA IND to fulfill the IPO requirement. They had accomplished that. All what they are doing now is just to keep investor happy. The funny thing is they even gave up the herbal medicine and moving into synthetic drugs. There are many returned oversea Chinese companies in China now. The only question I have is how much they had learned from the US companies. Recently C&E News editorial mentioned the rapid pharmaceutical progression in China and hinted that US is currently losing the young talents. We have to ask ourselves, do we really know what we are doing. I always warn myself, I am myself the worst enemy if I don’t know what I don’t know. I am working in this field for almost 30 years and I am still learning things everyday. It never ends. In China, how much time they are willing to spend in update themselves, that is a big question mark.
On a personal level, my dream is to modernize, or westernize if you will, the Chinese health care system. Emergency department need better equipments and training. Pharmaseutical industry needs reform. Chinese medicine need to be excluded from main stream and go to where it belongs, "food category" as in other countries. It is stunning to see a developing country wasting limted resources on unproven "medicine".
At least, I know there are few small private drug companies in China, they are moving very well. They mean to develop good medicine to benefit our beloved people. But the problem is the environment, the sentiment of people surround you. All the people want to make money and make money quickly. They neglect that fact that if you do something right or you have a good product you will make money eventually as well as benefit the people. We need to develop patience, to understand the business, and to change the investment mentality to modernize our pharmaceutical industry. If we don’t, we may be losing the ground to other countries. The API business is a typical example. Most of API used in generic industry today is from India or Europe after they originally imported from China. They bought the API final product from China as raw material and then reprocessed and re-sold to US with a tremendous margin (few cents from China vs.few dollars sold to US). Unfortunately, our government own pharmaceutical companies will not think about any long term project. The private industry like my old company has no idea about how to run the pharmaceutical companies. It is really a very very sad situation there.
Thank you again for your reading and comments.
A few random thoughts. I don't see a future for the Chinese herbal medince. All NIH (national institute of health) sponsored clinical trials are negative. Maybe the only way out for Chinese medicine is to identify an active ingradient. I believe the projects you worked in Shanghai was FDA approval for some herbal supplements, but not a "drug".To get FDA approval for a drug, you will need phase 1, 2 and 3 trials with the last 2 clinical and a post market analysis. I think it is a waste of money and resources to spend on herbal medicine with no proven effacacy.
Another thought, I feel sorry for your boss. She is a loser at least from a personal perspective. Somehow she found her niche to survive in this twisted Chinese society. I think your greatest asset, if you want to contribute to China, probably it is not your skills as a chemist, but the knowledege of American system, either in terms of management or personel evaluation. I think probably you should take a management position in your field instead.
On a personal level, my dream is to modernize, or westernize if you will, the Chinese health care system. Emergency department need better equipments and training. Pharmaseutical industry needs reform. Chinese medicine need to be excluded from main stream and go to where it belongs, "food category" as in other countries. It is stunning to see a developing country wasting limted resources on unproven "medicine".
我时常想，在人家的国家里，我们要求生存就得将计就计。能够争取的尽量争取。至少我觉得，在美国还是个讲理的地方。我在上海两年最令我失望与震惊的就是我们的海归分子的狂傲。他们把在国外受的怨气，一股脑全放在自己的同胞身上。俨然是一个十足的臭老九。所以，您提的香港教授，就不足以为奇了。尤其是广东人，他们同乡之间的情谊特重。不像我们山东人，老乡见老乡，两眼泪汪汪，啥都忘了。到了台湾，当地人不也是对大陆人另眼看待。比来比去，我还是宁愿呆在美国。至少多少年来，我知道我要的啥。该闭眼的时候，就把眼闭起来。该开口的时候就是，大声说理。以后我会慢慢的在我文里介绍。我说过，我们的日子充满了期望，问题是我们如何去达到我们的期望。取舍之间，就需要我们的智慧了。谢谢您的浏览与分享。
看来老毛鄙视臭老九不无道理
谢谢您的美文, 等着看您的下文了
Immigrants do have lots of inherited disadvantages. However, if you can jump from a low energy level to a higher level, much like an electron does, you will be above all the electrons in the lower levels even though you may be in the lower percentile among your level.
My personal belief is do whatever it takes to achieve personal success. Be aware of the racial issue and always stand up for yourself, just like you did for the second patent without making a big deal of race because this problem exists everywhere.