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Q&A

Where do you see your field going? What is your vision of the field in 2030?

The healthcare field is emerging much faster compared to anytime in the history of medical inventions. But we still have a lot of unmet medical and patient needs that can only be addressed when the community (including researchers, physicians, and policy makers) decide to work together. This is happening more and more in recent years—the outcomes of which you see in some of the most advanced medicines and healthcare systems available today. Over the next decade, I can only anticipate this pace of R&D to grow faster and bring novel therapeutics to our patients. My vision for 2030 for all of us involved with DIA and beyond is to break breakthrough therapy for cancer patients. There are millions of patients suffering from various types of cancers, and only a collective and collaborative approach between academia, industry, physicians, patients, and policy makers is going to make this happen. And the time is now…

What do you like most and least about your job?

What I like the most about my job is that, on a daily basis, I am working directly and indirectly with a large number of talented scientists and entrepreneurs focusing on developing innovative therapeutics to save lives and improve people’s quality of life. It is the most rewarding job. As a physician and a scientist in the field of biotechnology, I constantly witness and am reminded of the suffering of the patients in need of breakthrough therapies. This is also the driver for me and my colleagues in the field to strive to discover and develop medicines that meet the needs of patients around the globe.

What advice would you give your younger self about to enter the “real world?”

To excel in the biomedical field, you must have the desire and the dedication to help people in need and to serve humanity. Start with the work and the job at hand, establish yourself as the person your colleagues and your manager trust to be able to deliver what you are asked and have promised. At the same time, learn and work with colleagues outside your project and function. Participate in activities to enhance cross-functional collaboration and cross-industry community volunteer service to promote best practice sharing and operation excellence. Ultimately to become a leader and to generate greater positive impact for the industry and the people you desire to help.

What have you become better at saying “no” to? What approaches or realizations helped you?

That’s a tough one… but one of the things I have become better at saying “no” to, especially since I started Harbour BioMed, is requests to work on new targets before delivering on older projects. Science is exciting and keeps us all motivated to find that new breakthrough, but it is also important to have the discipline of delivering on what’s currently important. More often than not, we get distracted by the next new thing and start working on that, resulting in delays in our current work. And it’s not just science, it happens even when we have emails open while working on something else. So, I have learnt to say no to these distractions before delivering on current projects, be it science or emails.

How has DIA helped you?

DIA is a fantastic global platform to share knowledge and exchange ideas. Through this platform I have been able to access an unbelievable amount of high quality knowledge and information, and I’ve been fortunate to get to know an incredibly large number of highly talented colleagues and friends dedicated to address the patients’ unmet medical needs; among them a huge circle of lovely volunteers around the world, serving the community in the interest of industry and patients.

BIOGRAPHY

Jingsong Wang, MD, PhD, is the CEO of Harbour BioMed (HBM), a very promising biomedical start-up company in China. Before founding HBM, he was the Head of China Research and Development and of Translational Medicine, Asia Pacific, for Sanofi. Wang currently serves as the Chair of the China Regional Advisory Council, a role he has held since 2015. Under his leadership, DIA China established the annual Drug Discovery Innovation Conference (DDI) in 2015. This allowed the strategic expansion of DIA China’s portfolio from late-phase development to early-stage product discovery and development. Wang has been an active DIA member since 2012 and has been on the program steering committee for the DIA China Annual Meeting from 2015 to 2019, and was Co-Chair of the DIA China Annual Meeting in 2016. Tribute to his leadership and dedication to DIA, as well as his strong influence to China’s life-science innovation ecosystem, DIA China demonstrated a strong growth in both the Annual Meeting and DDI, attracting more than 3,000 and 700 attendees respectively. DIA’s sphere of influence gradually expanded from MNCs-centered, to Chinese domestic biotech, start-ups, research hospitals, etc.