It’s the time of a year again when we sit down and take a quiet moment to rewind what happened in this year and write down a few things that we hope for the year to come.

The year or 2008 has been full of dramas and hardships.  Many of us had learned from text book about the “Great Depression” of last century and have never thought the same thing could happened again in our life time. It did and, according to some economists, what we are experiencing now is no less than the last one 80 years ago.  Even worse, this derpession occurs at a much grander scale and affects almost every corner of the globe.

Interestingly, similar to what happened after last depression, the current crisis raised hot debate on “Socialism” vs. “Capitalism”. People believing in “capitalism and free market” are reluctant to intervene the market crisis and  while people who take action were labeled as ‘Socialists”.  For us who are coming from China also remember well a similar debate on “Socialism vs. Capitalism” 30 year ago. As a result of that discussion, Chinese economy took off with what was called “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” system, which can be seen as either a “regulated Capitalism” or a “limited Socialism”.

With my limited knowledge of economic theory, I see Capitalism is an approach that tries to solve the “supply and demand” problem and all other social issues associated with it from the end of “Production”, while Socialism tried to approach the same issues from the end of Distribution. Even though economists are by large divided into the two campuses, history seems to prove it again that there must be a “middle way”, a concept constitutes the core theory of Confucianism, and the way most of Chinese followed until today.

Regardless what the economists would say, as a direct result of current financial crisis, many of my friends and colleagues had to leave the jobs they worked for many years.  That put hardship on their career and family. However, as I have observed in the last decades or so, the Chinese American scientists are probably among the most industrial professionals who would never give up and are constantly looking for new opportunities and directions. The changes in fact created new opportunities for many.  Several of my close friends from multinational companies quickly landed on new jobs in China where they are leading a large group of scientists in drug discovery and development.  An old Chinese verbal says: “If the East is dark, West must be bright”.  In today’s situation, one might twink it a bit by saying “If the West is dark, East must be bright”.  Things are tough at East as well but it still looks brighter!

As we step into the new year, I wish the world will become more peaceful. Constructive economy (i.e. construction and production) can only grow in a peaceful environment, while destructive economy (i.e. war and destruction) likes the opposite. Having experienced such hardship in his early life, our new President would have better understandings of what is needed to get us out of the current crisis.

As for all my friends, let’s stick together closer and to give each other more support so we can all pass the turbulent water and reach the other side of the river safely.

2009, here I come!

This Tuesday, CABS/SAPA-West celebrated its 10 years Anniversary. For many of us, it is a very emotional moment. When I and a few friends started the organization 10 years ago, no one had imaged how we would be looked like in 10 years time. At that time, thinking of 10 years later would be something too far fetched. But we learned today, 10 year is not really a very long time.

If you are one of the lucky guy who can live up to 100 years, 10 year may only fall into statistic noise. But it you look it from a different aspect, 10 years can be too significant to waste.

A study by American Institutes for Education shows that the average age for one to receive his or her PhD degree is 32 and the average age for a PhD to land on his first job is between 35-40. Taking 35 as the starting point and assuming that one could reach his or her maximum potential by the age of 55, he or she would only have 20 years time to make it or break it. If you look things that way, 10 years is half of your career life!

It may be too late for me to think about that way for my career life, but for many young people who are about to enter the job market or just started his or her career, it not a bad idea to think about it and plan your life accordingly.

You may wake up tomorrow and only find out: time does fly

Sun sets and sun raises. People would usually think these as sequencial events occured at different times but think it again, these two events can actually be concurrent at different locations.

That is exactly the latest news tells us: the recent financial crisis and worsening of job market in US has caused a historical record high wave of “Hai-Gui” back to China for new opportunities at east, where the sun raises.

「金暴海归」已成为海外华人新现象。中国留学生回国人数增幅远超过出国留学人员，金暴更加剧海归回流数字。根据「中国青年报」10月报导，中国教育部预期2008年留学海归人数就将超过5万人，比2004年的2万5000人暴增一倍。从1978年中国开放留学以来至2007年，总海归人数才近32万，而光今年一年，海归人数就将超过 30年来的六分之一强。

If you are thinking of starting a CRO business, ask your self: how can I do better than the corporate “core facility” (COR) ?

Even though, CRO serves an important function in the “drug chain” by providing additional resource, it is equally critical that the CRO company should provide customers something better. What is the benchmark for “better”? Ironically, the benchmark for a CRO service is its customer’s “Core” facility.

Pharmaceutical companies, particuarly those large size, multi-national companies, often build their own state-of-art “core’ facility and hire top managers and scientists to run the facility. They often represents the highest technology and highest standard. It is indeed hard to beat them.

During my life as a corporate citizen, I have had chances to work with several CRO companies, some of them were started-up. Some of them grew up significantly since. There are things that CRO culd not match with internal “core” facilities. But there are other things companies can do better and CRO’s can and should build up on those strenghths.

CRO companies hardly purchase latest model, state-of-art instrument, unless is necessary. Those instrument comes with high cost in learning, operation and maintanence. Therefore, a show-off of “new toys” would not just cost the company but also raised concern of price. What CRO companies can do it to show their customer how they can use existing instrument much more efficiently with minimum ”down-time”. Efficiency is what CRO can do better and to stay profitable.

CRO companies can not recruite experienced research scientists as easily as large pharmas do, either because of the nature of the work, or the level of compensation they could afford. Since CRO’s are focused on process than research, the general phylosophy would not focused at hiring experienced scientists. That is a misconcept. Experienced research scientists can play pivoval role leading a successful project from process design to problem solving. Lack of such experienced staff often makes the customer reluctant to pass a serious work to the CRO company. To attract more senior staff, CRO could consider alternative compensation method such as “profit sharing” to motivate more people to join team. In that regard, CRO’s are much more flexible than pharmas in structuring their team. As the CRO company grows, more and mor senior scientists would join in. That is not only because the company can afford to pay for their experience, but also because the contracts CRO strikes would have increasing research component.

Technology is also hardly seen as an important components of CRO. “We do whatever you can do” may still a useful stratege to approach potential customers. However, smart managers would not stop there, they would pook you more about “how can you do the same with less?”. If the answer is lower cost, it will not fly well these days. In fact, as mentioned in another blog I wrote, cost in China is no longer that attractive as used to be and low cost can mean low “productivity” in some cases. Therefore, CRO company can not prosper without any proprietary technologies or “know-how”.

Several CRO companies I know of are all started with a technology flatform. The platform is usually a nice combination of several current technologies to make the process more efficient and productive. Although, sometimes such improvement looks obvious o many, iornically, “core” facilities in pharmas are often occupied by heavy demand of internal projects and are restricted to develope or improve current technology. On the contrast, pharmas are actually looking for smaller companies to come up with such new development and improvement. This is a big area that CRO’s can definitely do better than ‘Core” facilties.

Small, flexible, creative and efficient, these are the keys how CRO’s can beat “Core”facilities.

Last week, there was a major organizational changes in the place I worked for over 10 years. Three top managers and long time veterances were pushed out of the “door”. In another word, they were laid off. Although, the change was expected for a while, but when it comes down, people still found it kind of surprising. There were a lot emotion among the three maskteers and people worked for them for long time.

Thinks like that happend to many of us in the past and will occur some day in our life. Generally, there are three reasons for being laid off that is not related to your own performance:

1. The company went down

2. The department no longer needed

3. You function is eliminated

There are also three reasons of being laid off that is related to how your perform:

1. You have overgrown in current position and no upper position is available

2. You do perform well but failed to improve

3. Your performance arguablely does not meet the “expectation”

Interestingly, there are also three reasons you want to leave the company.

1. You are not satisfied with what you are doing or being asked to do

2. You found new directions that attracts you more

3. You are tired of working and look for more fun in life

In most case, even for the best reason, being laid off can be emotionally and financially stressful and depressing. If one can not handle it well, it can turn to be devastating and cause long term damage to individuals and the their families. However, on the other hand, people who can handle it well, often turn it to an opportunity and move on.

Among the dezens of top managers who left the company I am working with, for one reason or another, are all doing pretty well.  Thare have being three models:

1. Started own companies (alone or with partners)

2. Landed in similar position in another company

3. Enjoy the time and financial freedom

In any case, one door closed, one world opens!

A recent study by scientists from Geron and UCLA had solved another mystery of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The medicinal herb at the light spot is Huang-qi (黄芪）。

Astragolus (Chinese name: Huang-Chi) has been considered as one of the most precious medicinal herb that helped to “supplement Qi”. “Qi” is the term in traditional Chinese medicine that largely indicates the “functioning of the system”. If the person is in short of “Qi”, he or she will show many syndrome of organ malfunction and failure that are often seen in aged individuals. Different from Ginsen, which is also an important medicine to “improve body function” and can be used in an emergent situation such as shock, astragolus is more used in chronical situation to gradually improve the body function.

The molecular mechanism of Huang-qi has not been known for centries until recently. Studies has found TAT2, the active ingrediant of Astralogus, is fact a telomerase activator.

Telomere is a region at the end of every cell chromosome that contains repeated DNA sequences but no genes; telomeres act to protect the ends of the chromosomes and prevent them from fusing together. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres get shorter it can no longer divide. At this stage, the ability of cells to dividing would virtually stopped. The telomeres can be elongated by telomerase. Telomerase is a reverse transcriptase that carries its own RNA molecule used as a template when it elongates telomeres by adding repeats (”TTAGGG”) to the 3’ ends, In human, cells that need to divide regularly such as stem cells express telomerase, which allows them to divide. On the contrast, most somatic cells express it only at very low levels in a cell-cycle dependent manner.

In the latest study, TAT2 was tested in several ways. First, they exposed the CD8 T-cells from HIV-infected persons to TAT2 and found it not only slowed the shortening of the telomeres but improved the cells’ production of soluble factors called chemokines. They then took blood samples from HIV-infected individuals and separated out the CD8 T-cells and the CD4 T-cells – those infected with HIV. They treated the CD8 T-cells with TAT2 and combined them with the CD4 T-cells and found that the treated CD8 cells inhibited production of HIV by the CD4 cells.  

Through the new study and other studies on TAT2, it becomes clear that Huang-qi improves funcion of an aged or ailing organ by extending the cycles of cells. The impact of this result not just limited to the AIDS treatment but would more broadly

 

There are two pieces of reports that shine new lights on the treatment of AIDS, one of the deadest diseases of the 20th century.

One report from German involves an American AIDS patient who was under treatment for leukemia and received a selected bone marrow transplantation from a donor who has natural mutation of CCR5, the cellular receptor for AIDS virus, that make them resistant to AIDS infection. After the treatment, the patient seems free of leukemia and AIDS virus as well. Two birds hit by one stone!

Such CCR5 mutation (named delta32) occurs in just 1% of Europeans and does not exist in Asians and Africans. It was suggested the mutation was the result of a deadly viral disease swiped Europe hundreds years ago. Such mutation saved life of thousands at the time and likely will be another natural weapon against AIDS virus. Although curing AIDS through bone marrow transplantation is unlikely, this case, if proved successful, will open a door for gene therapy.

Almost at the same time, another group in France reported progress that could potentially lead to an new AIDS vaccine.  AIDS vaccines under development is hardly a news after two decades of trial-and-fails. So far 50 or so AIDS vaccines have failed at difference clinical stages and 30 or so remain in pipeline. Early AIDS vaccines are so-called “preventative vaccine” that produce anti-AIDS antibodies. This approach proved unsuccessful due to rapid mutation of AIDS virus. New generation vaccines are “therapeutic vaccines” that primes Killer T cells to destroy infected cells.

The latest such attempt was Merck’s V520, a very much anticipated vaccine, failed mysteriously. It was found that vaccinated volunteers are more pron to AIDS infection than those received empty vaccines.

The French group adopted a similar approach as the V520, where a common cold virus was used as a carrier for  AIDS antigens. However, instead of using a one that almost every one of us have exposed in our life, the French group used a rarely-exposed virus of the same family followed by a second boost with the common virus. The experiment was carried out in monkeys and those received vaccines stayed uninfected 500 days after the inoculation. The researcher believe that the key to the success is the immune response to the rarely-exposed virus gives a side-kick for the host immunity to AIDS antigens.

Both cases are being closely followed up now and I am interested to see if others follow the suit. Considering that anti-infectious disease medicines are the most effective drugs of the 20th century, we have high hope that one day we will find a cure for AIDS

The fight goes on…

In one week, I hear twice the term “passive aggressive” when I discussed with about certain behavior some of my friends demonstrated. No knowing what exactly the phrase means, I went on to do some googling or wicking.

Somehow to my surprise, the term is not simply defined as a type of “behavior”, it was even considered as a “personality disorder”! As usual, I am not so convinced by any “disorders” defined by psychologists. As a medical professional, I always think you can not define a “disease” without underlying pathological changes. However, in this case, our psychologists are clever than I thought. “Passive aggressive” is defined either as a “behavior/personality style” or as a “disorder”, if it becomes “habitual” or “pervasive”. Hum… if I understand it correctly, it means that it’s perfectly fine if you grumble a couple of times here and there, but if you keep grumbling on almost everything, you need to see a psychologist. I buy that.

However, the term “passive aggressive” caught my interest because I see the similar behavior very often among my close fellow Chinese colleagues. Some times,  it makes me even think that is a part of our “Culture”.  Confucius had done that a quite few times as recorded in his “bible”. He was upset about changes in the society and compared such changes as “river runs downwards” not “up”!. In one case, he was caught yelling “is that a spoon?!, is that a spoon?!” when seeing an spoon apparently with “modern design” then. He was aggressively promoting his political and social theory and practice to governments but also threatened those who did not follow him that he would go oversea if he could not get his “way”. The word “way” or “road” also means the basic philosophy, principle or guidance in Chinese. Was Confucius a bit “passive aggressive”? Probably.

There are some reasons for Chinese scholars who come to study and work in a foreign country such as United States to be “passive aggressive”. They feel themselves are hopelessly among “foreigners” with them they can not communicate easily. Even if they tried to establish a conversation, very often, they found that such discussion only reveals deep differences in value, principles and stands. As a results of that, they often feel that their opinions are not taken seriously and their efforts were not appreciated. That leads that either “negative, pessimistic” or, on the other hand, “passive aggressive”. The difference between these two are the formal gives up any effort to defend himself and passively accept the status qua while the latter defends himself or his opinion by non-collaborating.

I do not blame my friends who developed such a “behavior style” of “passive aggressive”, I, myslef, also constantly question myself if it is worth to spending twice as much as effort than others to work and collaborate with an environment that is “not-so-friendly”. However, that is not the reason to become “passive aggressive”. Such behavior would not get you anywhere but only make it even more difficult to communication with others.

Let’s face the fact. Unless you are born in this country and studied Alistopher than Confucius in your early life, there will always be an “invisible” barrier between you and others. And that is NOT only the “other party’s” fault. Accepting the reality means we do have to be prepared to spend more time and effort to get our ideas through and get ourselves accepted. And the right attitudes that would help you to get there are “positive”, “cooperative” and “consistent”.

By the way, don’t be afraid of taking Confucius. He still has many good things to blog about.

More and more people feel under pressure at working place: less support and more work, longer time and smaller pay increase, shorter deadline and higher demand, etc. If you feel some of these things, congratulations! because you still have a job

Are you under pressure? that is a difficult situation to judge, different people give different answers.

One of my long time friends recently gave me a call to inform me about a high profile job he took several months back. On the phone, he told me how busy he was and how much pressure he got from his new boss. I know he is a very capable person. The reason he talked about the pressure at work was simply a way to apologize for not being able to call me earlier. I am pretty sure he called me from a beach while the rest of the family are playing.

However, for many of my close friends, the pressure from work is more a reality. Downsize the company, budget cutting, shorter timeline for delivery, higher standard, all these force them to stay at work after 5 pm. Very often, they have to finish up the work on weekend. I know that because I come to my office almost every weekend too, where I found I can be twice as productive as during the week days.

There are also other situations, people who complain to their colleagues, their boss and their friends how much pressure they are undergoing, only invited suspicious looks and questions for their capability.

So, how do you know you are under pressure?

From years of working experience, I came up with this “Pressure index” (PI).

PI  =  W/(P*R)

where W = workload, P = Productivity and R = personal resilience to pressure.

W = 1 , if one is given a workload what is within what is expected for his position and experience and is fair with peers and W > 1 if overloaded or < 1 if not enough work;

P = 1, if the person performs at his level of expertise and is compatible with peers and P < 1 if he is not up to the expectation or > 1 if exceeds;

R =1 if the person is handling workload properly under current circumstance (either under loaded or over loaded). The R value can also be > 1 or < 1 depending on how the person handles and feels about the pressure.

With this formula, whether or not a person is “under pressure” or feels “under pressure” depends on three factors: the actual workload, the individual productivity and the how the person handles pressure. Under a “regular”, “routine” or “normal” working condition, W =1, P = 1, R = 1 and therefore PI = 1. That means “No pressure”. If W increase or P or R decreases, PI will increase and the person will feel the pressure.

The W (workload) and P (Productivity) are not totally independent factors. Managers often assigned workload according to individual’s capability and productivity. Some time, one can also analyze the work assignment and reduce it to normal level by eliminating unnecessary parts or setting up priorities. However, more often, the workload is not flexible no mater who does it and it is increased from previous assignments. In that case, if the individual can not find a way to increase his/her productivity (P), the PI (Pressure Index) will increase. On the contrast, if the higher demand in work leads one to think out a new, creative way to work (P > 1), the PI could even decrease. We often heard about such stories from different people when talking about their work pressures.

However, even if two persons were assigned to the same work and all came up with similar or different approaches to increase their productivity, their feelings about the pressure can still be different. There are people who are challenged by the workload and enjoy the excitement once they found a way to breakthrough. At the same time, he or she can still enjoy personal life after work. There are also others, who are equally capable of managing the workload but constantly complain about increasing workload and responsibility. These people often take the poor feeling about “being pressured” to their home and ruin their personal life and life of people close to them. The difference is how resilience one is to the challenges and pressure. Pressure resilience (R) may not necessarily solve the work problem, but it will influence how your perform under pressure and your productivity (P) and therefore the Pressure Index.

So, here is how you can use the PI principle to reduce the work pressure you feel you are currently under:

- Reduce the unnecessary work and focus at what is the most important ones.

- Try to improve your productivity by doing it differently from past

- Take a deep breath and enjoy it!

If any of these worked, you will be less pressured and feel a lot better at work. If none of these worked for you, then may want to take a holidays or to find another job. But remember, work pressure will be every where regardless what you do and, in almost every case, whether or not you are working under pressure is not judged by YOU but by people above and around you!

Since left China almost 26 years ago and lived and worked in foreign countries, I had only two chances to participate a national election and to cast my vote. One was this week.

On the election day (Nov 3rd), I went to work as usual and arrived the voting station at around 6 pm. To my surprise, the voting station was set in someone’s garage in a nearby neighborhood. At 6 pm, the neighborhood street was very quite and dark. If you don’t pay attention, you would easily miss the station. I parked my car right in the front of the garage simply because my GPS told me so. I was reluctant for a second until I saw a small US flag on front yard.

The owner of the house pushed his staff to the side to make place for two tables and three simple voting booths. Walking in to the garage, I was welcome by the election staff: two young girls and two old ladies. The first girl asked my name, the second girl asked my address (as a double check). The first lady handed me the ballot paper and the last lady, I knew later, was simply watching the “black box” where people drop their ballots. It took me only 2 minutes to fill in the ballot since I had already made my mind before coming here. It was reported that it took Mr. Obama 10 min to complete the process, he must have had done some readings and thinking on the site.

The simplicity of the voting process is clearly a sign of maturation of the democratic process in this country. The fact that the workers did not even bother to check my driver license to confirm my identity shows how much the trust is among ordinary people, although, it is pron to errors that was reported before.

The trust of the system in people and the trust of people in the system are the two fundamentals for any democratic system to work. So much I was disappointed to have to cast my “holy” vote in a “garage booth”, I equally impressed by the process itself for its simplicity, peace and smoothness. While democracy in many countries is still a “luxury” political accessory or being “experimenting”, it is a part of life-style here. One can argue if democracy is the only right system for everyone, but you cann’t deny that democracy is the system that allows the society to agree on disagreement and to move on, in a modern term, “in harmony”.

Without doubt, the modern technology, particularly the internet, has greatly promoted the system to the rest of the world. However, it is not realistic to expect the rest of world (out side of the “Greek culture” circle) to follow the suit quickly. The current western democratic system has its root from Greek civilization. It took century’s experimentation and education to reach today’s maturation. Just in this country, just 50 years ago, blacks were not allowed to have the equal voting right as whites. That is why the outcome of this year’s election is so important for American and so important for the democratic system itself. Other countries which do not have the culture tradition will take longer time to travel on this direction with more bumpers on the road. Even if they got there, it may not be the same as western democracy. Pushing the western system to the rest of the world, as President Bush tried with the back of powerful military force, proved to be nothing but pain, suffer and failure.

With those thoughts in my mind, I voted!