Academician Dong Chen: The outbreak highlights the importance of the combination of clinical public health in scientific research

"I'm still more bullish on vaccines, because after all, vaccines are a more effective means for humans to fight infectious diseases." Recently, Professor Dong
, Vice President of
University's School of Medicine, gave an exclusive interview to Yan Journalist. Referring to the new crown vaccine, he said countries attach great importance to it this time, "especially the two major countries in China and the United States have shown very strong scientific research strength." While
confidence in vaccines, Dong believes that vulnerable people such as hospital doctors, middle-aged and elderly people and service workers may be given priority protection. A new crown vaccine may be available by the end of this year or early next year, but to what extent can it be used? I think it depends on the production capacity, cost and how our public health policies are developed.
As an authoritative expert in the field of immunology, Dong Chen also mentioned that the new crown outbreak gave some tips in the field of immunology, "Our immunological development, on the one hand, is of course to make a breakthrough in basic theory, but on the other hand, can it help the actual clinical problems?" During the interview, Dong Chen repeatedly stressed the importance of composite talents, he has always believed that the architecture of modern medicine should be the "triangular bench" foundation, that is, scientific research, clinical services and public health, "in the face of the new wave of infectious diseases, we can deal with all aspects."
Dong Chen, 53, graduated from Wuhan University with a bachelor's degree in cell biology in
and went on to study for a Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, whose doctoral mentor was Max D. Cooper, a Rask Prize winner known as the No. Eight years after graduating, Dong transferred to the Department of Immunology at Yale University School of Medicine and immunology at the University of Washington (Seattle) and in 2004 to the Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas. Prior to his return in 2013, Dong was a chair professor at the Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas.
2014, Tsinghua University officially established the Institute of Immunology (IITU), with Dong Chen as director. In September 2016, Dong Chen was officially appointed Assigned Ton
Tsinghua University School of Medicine and was elected China's
2019.
Dong Chen is mainly devoted to immunology research, focusing on the molecular regulatory mechanisms of immune tolerance and immune response, to understand the pathogenesis of autoimmune and allergic diseases, and to explore new types of tumor immunotherapy. It is worth mentioning that Dong Chen is one of the founders and research authority in the field of differentiation, regulation and function of Th17 cells (auxiliary T cell 17). Th17 cells mainly secrete lecierle mesotonin 17, Th17 was found to play an important role in the development of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, Dong Chen laboratory found and identified Th17 cell properties and disease-caused role in various diseases, promoting the rapid development of Th17 field. At the same time, Dong Chen has made pioneering contributions to the discovery and research of Tfh (fable-assisted T-cells) and Tfr (fable-regulating T-cells).
It is worth noting that before this interview, known as the scientific research community "discipline committee" of foreign academic exchange online platform PubPeer has been anonymous postings, questioning Dong Chen and others more than 20 papers there is a multi-use and reuse and other issues, and then some media questioned his team's academic fraud. Dong Chen did not shy away from the question in the interview, he responded, "My main job is to bring together the previous 10 students, the original material related to the article to find out, and then each question is a response, the conclusion is no fraud, no academic misconduct."
he admits that the incident has caused him some trouble, "questioning and fraud are two different things, because fraud is a very serious matter for scientists, can make him in a bad name." Dong Chen said, "In general, I hope that the academic discussion will come back to the academic circle, and I do not want the small-scale academic discussion to be put online and turned into a public event
After this interview, Dong Chen also made a keynote speech on the theme of "biomedicine" organized by West Lake University, focusing on how to promote the development of the innovative biopharmaceutical industry to share his feelings. He mentioned that, first, from the source, some basic life science research is very important;
following is a transcript of the interviews with journalists and Professor Dong Chen (slightly reduced):Recently, the Chinese Academy of Engineering
, military
Institute of Military Medicine researcher Chen Wei led the team and the Team of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom have disclosed the latest clinical trial data of the new crown vaccine, how do you evaluate the progress of vaccine research, these vaccines will end the outbreak?First of all, I am more optimistic about this vaccine, because after all, the vaccine is a more effective means for humans to fight infectious diseases, and this time countries attach great importance to, our country also ranked a lot of different directions and paths, the United States has done a lot, so also showed that China and the United States two major countries are very strong scientific research strength, there are some more traditional pharmaceutical companies and vaccine companies are developing new crown vaccine, so overall I am still relatively confident. Of course, in general, the case of the new coronavirus in the population caused by more severe symptoms is not too many cases, indicating that the general population of the new coronavirus still has an immune protection mechanism, in this regard we have also done some research.
think there may be a new crown vaccine by the end of this year or early next year, but can it be used, to what extent? I think it still depends on the production capacity, cost and how our public health policies are developed. To be sure, we should give priority to protecting vulnerable people, such as hospital doctors, middle-aged and elderly people, service industry workers and so on.
but I find it hard to say that this winter it will become a programme of immunization, which is called vaccination for everyone. On the one hand, was the product ready at that time? On the other hand, can its production capacity reach the billions of people in the world, or can more than a billion people in our country be vaccinated? I don't think it's possible.you are an expert in immunology, what are the immunological characteristics of this new coronavirus?The main thing is that it reacts differently in the population, causing cases including asymptomatic, in fact, asymptomatic is likely to be seriously underestimated, why there are new cases coming out constantly, and can not find out where the source is, in fact, perhaps the most important is asymptomatic people brought in.
and then there are mild, severe, and we're actually curious, what's the difference between a mild illness and a serious illness? What is the difference between the immune response it causes, the host, and the patient's immune system? This is a major consideration, our preliminary study found that in recovering patients have a more comprehensive immune response, including B-cell antibodies, the production of comprehensive antibodies is more common, including T-cells, that is, cellular immunity, can also be detected. What is the difference between the immune characteristics of those who are now concerned about the serious illness and those who are able to recover? If found, it may also be possible to predict whether someone will turn seriously ill, which is what we want to do.
Overall, I think this time the virus is characterized by a very hidden, highly contagious, but the symptoms caused are not even the same, even the vast majority of people do not have a severe reaction, with some influenza a bit similar, of course, its mortality rate may be higher.are there some differences between current studies and clinically known severe and mild diseases?There are some studies, but there are still relatively few studies on immunology, mainly summarized, including differences in male and female, age differences, and whether patients have basic symptoms, including obesity, cardiovascular disease and other problems. It is also important to know whether the patient's outer blood lymphocytes are reduced significantly, which is also a more important indicator.
but what's behind it? We also need to go further, including animal models and patient samples. For example, if seriously ill patients can produce good antibodies, the therapeutic antibodies that we're actually developing now may not be useful. If you want another strategy, perhaps anti-inflammatory, with the original Zhongnanshan
hormones, and later in
they first try to use the toad monoantin, this research may become a dominant.
these are all very scientific issues and a challenge that has never been encountered before for humanity. A other issue that everyone is very concerned about "Fuyang", of course, is still quoted, but including the Qinchuan team's animal model tests and other studies show that the new crown virus infected rhesus monkeys will not be infected after rehabilitation, what do you think of this problem? I think further research is needed, and qinchuan's animal models conclude that infected animals have a protective power, but a recent study by Chongqing Medical University, published in Nature-Medicine, notes that antibodies don't last long and drop a lot in three months. There are some other groups have similar reports, we are also looking at our patient samples are not also this problem, so we also need to verify that if antibodies can not maintain that T-cell immunity can be maintained? This is also a factor that needs to be studied.
The point to emphasize is that the vaccine cannot therefore be ruled out, because the vaccine is a completely different mechanism to activate the immune system, it is actually the use of other virus vectors or inactivated viruses, or even give a different way, the new coronavirus is transmitted through the respiratory tract, but the vaccine is intramuscular injection, completely different, so it is not because these to exclude the protection of the vaccine. Now there are some voices talking about whether a new crown vaccine should be used or not, and I think if the vaccine passes rigorous clinical trials and is reliable and protective, we should still use it. You have worked in the field of immunology for many years, Tsinghua University in 2014 also officially set up the Institute of Immunology, but you just mentioned the new crown outbreak, in fact, the field of immunology research is not a lot, how do you think of the development of the field of immunology in China over the years? Our national immunology still has a very large development, including Tsinghua, Shanghai YSW, China University of Science and Technology, these years have introduced a lot of young people, and then set up a better research-oriented research institutions, from the perspective of more and more papers, the influence in the world is also growing, these are good. But this outbreak also gives us some tips, is our immunological development, on the one hand, of course, from the basic theory to make a breakthrough, but on the other hand, can we have some help with the actual clinical problems?
in this respect, I have been speaking of an argument that our domestic basic and clinical combination is not enough. When I worked abroad, I had a basic immune department, but in fact, in addition to doing basic research-like scientists, there will be a large number of clinicians in the department of basic immunity have some kind of teaching relationship, he has part-time, also participate in graduate teaching, and basic immunology scientists will play a role in the teaching of medical students. Domestic relatively dislocation is relatively strong, and clinical aspects of the new immunological development and knowledge feel relatively slow, in general, doctors in the training of science education is not enough, the sustainable education is not enough.
so I think it's not okay to go any further and we're going to have to put these two together better and completely force basic scientists to solve clinical problems. First, the expertise of basic science is not to do clinical immunology research, and second, the number of people is too small. Generally speaking, the ratio of basic immunologists and clinical immunologists in a medical school in the United States is about 1:5, if so, our man-made personnel is simply not enough, so I think this is the future need to be from the mechanism system, research funding methods, team building and so on to further solve the problem. you have a good trial and experience in basic and clinical integration? I actually came back thinking that when I was building the Institute of Immunology, I had to have a research platform for human immunology, so that some advances in basic immunology could be combined with clinical samples, new analysis and new explanations of the disease, and I tried to introduce an associate researcher in my own laboratory, who had been doing human immunology research for many years and was familiar with some of the relevant technical methods. We started by doing tumor samples to learn more about the diversity of human tumors and their micro-environment.
These efforts have helped us build some methodology, so this time we've applied some early methods to the new crown relatively quickly, and I think the work and team in this area can be further expanded in the future, and now there are a lot of scientists who are paying more and more attention to the immunological basis of human disease research. In fact, it is difficult to say whether these studies are basic or applied, because the ideas and methods used are similar to basic scientific research, but the object is not a model animal, but a clinical sample. in addition to experts in immunology, as an
of Tsinghua University School of Medicine, how do you see the entire medical system's response to this outbreak? the situation in Wuhan in the early part of this year is actually a challenge for our entire medical profession, and of course it is also a retest. You can see that our basic science is still good, including the earliest virus isolation sequencing, also announced to the world very early, so I think this time the basic science or played a relatively beautiful battle, the latest vaccine research and development is also relatively fast. But the medical clinical aspect also saw some problems, relatively speaking, Wuhan's medical conditions in the country is not top, but also better, this time Wuhan hospitals are under so much pressure, the national medical staff to assist, in the face of a new infectious disease, I think it reflects that although the doctor is very brave, but how to deal with, in fact, there are some challenges.
, on the one hand, in the face of new challenges, clinical not only to save people, but also to find solutions to new diseases, which requires a high degree of clinical and scientific research. Second, how do these phenomena we see clinically translate into public health policies, and this policy needs to be appropriate