On February 17th, the 2021 and 2022 Award Ceremony of the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation was grandly held at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse. A total of 112 outstanding scientific and technological professionals won the 2021 and 2022 Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Science and Technology Award. Prof. Yongjun Wang, Leading Scientist of CPL, received the 2022 Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Science and Technology Progress Award.
The Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation was established in 1994 by Hong Kong patriotic financiers Ho Sin-hang, Leung Kau-kui, Ho Tim, and Lee Quo-wei to reward outstanding Chinese scientists and serve national modernization. Over the past 29 years, 1,526 outstanding scientists have been selected and awarded, which has become a successful example of utilizing/relying on China's social forces to establish science and technology awards. It contributes to stimulating the vitality of China's scientific and technological development and fostering independent innovation talents.
Yongjun Wang is Leading Scientist of CPL, President of Beijing Tiantan Hospital affiliated to Capital Medical University, Professor of Neurology Department, Director of National Center for Healthcare Quality Management in Neurological Diseases, Vice Director of China National Clinical Research Center for Neurological Diseases, Director of Advanced Innovation Center for Human Brain Protection, President of Chinese Stroke Association, Designated Chairman of the Neurology Branch of Chinese Medical Association, and Chief Editor of Stroke and Vascular Neurology. He worked as one of the chief scientists for the 12th Five-Year Plan for science and technology development on cerebrovascular diseases, and the 13th Five-Year Plan National Key Research and Development Project on chronic non-communicable diseases. He is also a member of the expert group of National Major Scientific and Technological Special Project for “Significant New Drugs Development”. Prof. Wang’s research focuses on the recurrence mechanism and intervention strategy of ischemic cerebrovascular disease. He has won 2 Second Prize of National Science and Technology Progress Awards and 2 First Prize of Ministerial and Provincial-Level Science and Technology Progress Awards as the first person to complete. He has also received First National Innovation Awards Medal, Zhongyuan Concord Life Medicine Awards, Tan Jiazhen Life Science Award, and the title of “National Outstanding Professional and Technical Talents”.
Prof. Wang has long been engaged in research of recurrence prevention strategies for cerebrovascular disease. His “CHANCE” study has solved the worldwide clinical problem that combined antiplatelet therapy can not be used to reduce recurrence in the field of cerebrovascular disease and reduced the recurrence rate of ischemic stroke from 11% to 8.2%. In China alone, this would reduce the number of stroke recurrences by 740,000 patients and reduce medical costs by more than 10 billion yuan. Wang’s “Chinese solution” has rewritten the guidelines in China, Europe, the United States and other countries, ushered in a new era of short-term combined antiplatelet therapy, and has been selected as one of the “Major Advances in International Medicine of 2013" by the New England Journal of Medicine, “Annual New Progress in the Treatment of Cerebrovascular Disease” by Lancet Neurology, and one of the “three major breakthroughs in the world in the past decade” by Stroke.
On this basis, Prof. Wang systematically conducted pharmacogenomics research of combined therapy and discovered that ABCB1, CYP2C19 and F2R, key genes of clopidogrel absorption and metabolism pathways, all significantly influence the efficacy of CHANCE protocol, revealing the genetic mechanism of drug efficacy in combined antiplatelet therapy, which became the core supporting data of the "Black Box Warning" in the FDA instructions for use of clopidogrel. For people carrying clopidogrel loss-of-function alleles, Wang proposed the “bypass gene” alternative treatment protocol of ticagrelor, solved the bottleneck problem that genetic testing could be time-consuming and the alternative plan could not be clinically validated by developing a non-invasive rapid gene testing technology based on oral mucosal cells, and successfully confirmed the safety and efficacy of the clinical application of CHANCE-2 protocol. This also marks that China has taken the lead in the field of precision medicine research of cerebrovascular disease in the world.
As an accomplished researcher, Prof. Wang also proposed the “Golden Bridge” strategy to efficiently translate evidence-based medicine into clinical practice and confirmed that the “Golden Bridge” strategy could reduce the recurrence risk of cerebrovascular disease by 26% through a cluster randomized controlled trial. This strategy was appraised by the Journal of the American Medical Association as “bridging the guidelines and clinical practice”. His research results were written into the “Chinese Clinical Management Guidelines for Cerebrovascular Disease” as the highest-level recommendation and published nationwide by the National Health Commission as the national administrative standard for medical quality improvement of cerebrovascular disease.
