May 17, 2017

Diabetes in China and the world

It is my honor to be able to describe to you today the breakthrough research results that are being reported in the high impact journal Nature early tomorrow morning. 
Diabetes is one of the most rapidly growing diseases affecting the world today, with China significantly leading the growth of this deadly disease in the most recent 10 years.  The rest of the world has slowly been growing more obese over the past century, and this obesity epidemic often leads to diabetes.  In contrast, the Chinese population has started getting fatter relatively recently and it is critical that we understand both the basic science of diabetes and obesity as well as develop new medicines to treat this disease.  We also need to understand if the newly developed diabetes and obesity medicines are more responsive to different regions of the world such as in China.  The two receptors that you will hear about today called the glucagon and glp1 receptors which are key regulators of our bodies metabolism.  These receptors are locks for how our bodies communicate important signals, and the drugs we develop to treat disease are the keys that open and close the locks.  These results that you are hearing about today will help to create new medicines to treat diabetes and obesity.

Shanghai scientific community

Secondly, I would like to mention the Shanghai scientific community and the importance of teamwork and collaboration in successfully overcoming incredibly difficult scientific challenges.  Shanghai is rapidly becoming the top city in the world for cutting edge scientific research.  The resources in the Zhangjiang high-tech park area are the very best in the world and it is an honor to be able to conduct research here.  What is critically important in scientific research of really challenging projects, and the data being presented today is a perfect example, is teamwork.  The leadership and key research of the results today came together from the iHuman Institute at ShanghaiTech, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Fudan University and the Chinese National Compound Library all in Shanghai, together with researchers from Amsterdam, University of Southern California, the GPCR Consortium, and the multinational pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk.  One of the reasons I became a scientist was a love for science, the opportunity to collaborate with people from all over the world, and make a positive impact on the world.  I am very grateful for the opportunity to work with my scientific brothers and sisters here in Shanghai and be able to accomplish this great research.

iHuman Institute and ShanghaiTech University

Third, I would like to highlight that the iHuman Institute is rapidly becoming one of the very top new research institutes in the world.  In addition to the 2 papers appearing in Nature today focused on diabetes research, the iHuman Institute will also be reporting today in the journal Nature Communications on the structure determination of the smoothened G-protein coupled receptor, a target that is important for cancer drug research that you will hear about in the second session of this press conference. And a 4th paper will appear tomorrow in the Cell Press journal Structure in collaboration with the Amgen Asia R&D Center here in Shanghai on the apelin receptor which is important for the development of new medicines to treat heart disease.   All of these results are critical for the iHuman Institute’s mission and goal which is focused on building an atomic resolution model of the human body to understand disease and develop new medicines.  This is one of the most ambitious scientific challenges in the world today.

Finally, I would like to give special thanks to SIMM Director Hualiang Jiang who brought my family and I to Shanghai in 2011.  I would also like to thank ShanghaiTech University President Jiang Mian Heng who gave me the opportunity to build a best in the world research institute at ShanghaiTech University in this incredible scientific city of Shanghai.

At this point I would now like to turn the podium over to Professors Wu Beili and Song Gaojie who will describe the breakthrough research appearing tomorrow in the journal Nature.