Academician Kung-Tsung Wang - Pioneer in the Field of Taiwan Bioorganic Chemistry Research

    In 1929, Dr. Kung-Tsung Wang was born in Taipei. Because his father was teaching at the Dai-Chiao Elementary School at the time, Dr. Wang, of course, studied there. Six years later, Dr. Wang performed exceptionally on the junior high examination was successfully admitted by the Third Junior High School (presently The Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University) in April, 1942. As a matter of fact, the year 1942 was just when the Second World War was still taking place while Taiwan was still under rule by Japan; therefore, the students often had to hide and run from the air strikes and couldn’t study peacefully. And warfare brought about draft that forced Dr. Wang to suspend his studies and served in the military in Taoyuan. After the war ended, Taiwan's educational system transferred in style from Japanese to American. Dr. Wang participated in the High School Examination in September of 1945 and continues his studies in Taipei High School.

    Year 1948, Dr. Wang experienced the most significant transition of his life. He got admitted in the Department of Chemistry of National Taiwan University, and started his chemistry research profession. Dr. Wang was just like a regular teenager then, who wasn’t too clear on his goals and neither was he especially in love with Chemistry or anything. It was just that he disliked the overflowing and repetitious calculating operations and computations over formulas like those in Physics and Mathematics, did he decide to choose Chemistry; thereby, he found Chemistry to be such an empirically rich science. Such passion and interest arose that he made it to be his life to study within this field, making his life extraordinary.

    Dr. Wang started his job as teaching assistant for Department of Chemistry in National Taiwan University since 1954, and worked on distilling / separating and further determining the structure of natural substances in Professor Yao-Tang Lin’s laboratory. His first research topic was to analyze and discover the structure of Taiwan cypress volatile oil, which is what, was the fragrance of the phenol ingredient that was often smelled as one walks through the forest. The economical conditions of Taiwan’s research facilities, however, were very poor then, universities didn’t have sufficient budget to buy the novel equipments and instruments needed; therefore, over the first six years, there wasn’t much progress. Until 1958 when Professor Lin studied abroad in Munich, Germany, had there been any significant breakthrough. Then, Professor Lin wrote to Dr. Wang, telling him that Germans successfully used a kind of absorbent of polyamide (the primary constituent of clothes made of nylon), administering column chromatographic analysis for purification of flavonoid.
    At that resources-deficient period of time, Taiwan barely has money to get the expensive polyamide for research at all, so Dr. Wang used the nylon shirt that Professor Lin provided as research materials. He dissolved the nylon shirt using the formic acid, and then used ethanol to settle and enhance the nylon purity. Finally, he made nylon powder by leaving it out to air dry, and used column chromatographic analysis for purification of flavonoid.
    Dr. Wang, however, thought that administering column chromatographic analysis over purification of flavonoid was too complex and much of annoyance. After pondering over it for couple of days; he thought, why not try using the filter paper’s chromatographic analytic method? Consequently, the idea starting out to save troubles, unexpectedly separated the ortho, para and meta benzyl phenol successfully. That was remarkable for the time, for the structures in benzyl phenol differs very little and would be difficult to separate with the traditional method used in separation of compounds. Dr. Wang exhibits the love and passion of a scientist toward research at such a young age. In order to do research, he has the spirit to of not hesitating to sacrifice anything at all.
    The well-known analytic chemist B. Weinstein mentioned this method in his work, thin layer chromatography, and thought it was the method of thin film chromatographic analysis of the poor. This method was widely utilized soon after in determining the protein amino acid sequencing, and contribute much to the Nobel Prize winners of 1972 in both medicine and chemistry, Stanford Moore, William H. Stein, Gerald M. Edelman, who were famous in protein amino-acid sequencing.

    It was August 1968; Dr. Wang was promoted professor, meanwhile, around the end of the year, Dr. Choh-Hao Li, who was internationally recognized for mastering in the studies of pituitary gland, returned to Taiwan from San Francisco. He hoped that he could find a young scholar who has the potential to aid him in research at his laboratory in the United States. Conventionally, he would always speak with every professor and associate professor of NTU Department of Chemistry himself, face to face.
    When he met Dr. Wang and read a little of his paper, he said, “Oh, so you are the one who did the structural analysis over that polyamide?! I heard them talking in the Rockefeller University. It was useful. So it was you! Do you want to join me in my lab?” Because prior to this, Dr. Wang only did studies in Chemical analysis, the offer to transition into the studies of protein synthesis seemed a bit uncomfortable for Dr. Wang. Dr. Li seeing this, didn’t mind at all but said, “That’s okay. You’ll have some time to study and check it out after coming to my lab, and you’ll adjust. Don’t be afraid of trying something new.”
    August of 1969, Dr. Wang came to UCSF’s hormone research of graduate studies. The research facilities led by Dr. Li already has ten years of history by then, along with forty some researchers splitting up into three working groups including hormone, protein synthesis, and bioassay. Dr. Wang joined the protein synthesis group, and worked on chemically synthesizing human growth factor research, setting the foundations of biochemistry research that he would be focusing later.

    The development in solid phase synthesis at the beginning was met with faithless adversity. Solid phase synthesis and the liquid phase synthesis method differ in that, even though the liquid phase synthesis method require purification between each step and is quite laborious because of it, the results obtained is actually quite clear; however, the solid phase synthesis is conducted continuously and purifies at the very end, removing the byproducts and those reactants that didn’t completely react. The validity and stability varies and carries much unknown in its process; therefore, the organic chemists then all reject to acknowledge the yet-to-be-validated findings made with the solid phase synthesis, for they thought these are just "a pile of mixtures" and the biologically active molecules could not be identified or affirmed this way.
    Despite of that, Dr. Wang boldly used solid phase synthesis to synthesize human body growth factors, and because of the improvement in this technique and purification processes, 99.9% purity of end product can be achieved with the modern solid phase synthesis. No one called it "trash" anymore thereafter. Meanwhile, this also proved Dr. Wang’s daring spirit to try and innovate to be the right choice.
    Other than that, Dr. Wang’s daring spirit brought about the applications in Taiwan cobra cardio toxin solid phase synthesis, along with his disciple Chi-Huey Wong (presently an international well-known visiting scholar in America with expertise in bioorganic chemistry), the Shui-Tein Chen, and Chewn-Lang Ho (presently in the Institute of Biological Chemistry of Academia Sinica in Taipei). The three gentlemen completed it together in 1978, which made it the first international efforts ever. Proving, once again that, scientists need to have the daring spirit and specifically to put into practice. One can make magnificent differences.

    Year 1962 when Dr. Wang was a Lecturer in NTU Department of Chemistry, NTU President Mr. Shih-Liang Chien invited him to be the Chief Operations Officer of China Chemistry Society. However, Dr. Wang excused himself with “I am busy on experiments.” Eighteen years later (1980), when Mr. Chien was acting as President of Academia Sinica, he again sent out an invitation to Dr. Wang and requested him to act as the head for Institute of Biological Chemistry. Similarly, Dr. Wang attempted to excuse himself with three reasons: I don’t like to be, I don’t have the experience, and I don’t know how to socialize. Present Chien replied intelligently with: you have to, you can learn, and people would believe you if you are not so skilled at socialization; thereby, Dr. Wang took the job.
    After a three-year term, he thought he should leave it to someone else for a change; so one day, he left a resignation letter on Present Chien’s desk. After Present Chien saw that, he immediately called Dr. Wang and said, “Dr. Wang, you forgot something here. Please come and pick it up.” Thus, being unable to resign, he acted as the head all the way till 1986. In his term, he assertively propelled the domestic biochemistry research, led with maximum effort, and established the representative research model for the Institute of biological Chemistry of Academia Sinica.

    Who says microwave can only be used in the kitchen? Actually this kind of machine can be very helpful at hydrolysis and synthesis! In 1986 when Dr. Wang went to America to visit his relatives, he saw the microwave that his wife was using and thought, “Can’t I use it to accelerate protein hydrolysis and synthesis reactions?” Thus, when he went back to Taiwan, he would think of buying one to try all the time, but microwave was very rare and expensive in Taiwan then. After searching for a long long time, he found one American made microwave and tried his first experiment, hydrolysis reaction.
    This method cut the reaction time from one day to five minutes, with precision and accuracy unchanged. 1987, after he published the first paper over the topic of utilizing microwave on hydrolysis reactions, American Company CEM took the initiative to donate a microwave to the effort.
    Then, the laboratory started assertively utilizing microwave for peptide synthetic reactions and proved that it not only shortens reaction time, but also increases the efficiency of reaction. These thoughts and findings all got published in the internationally known journals and contributed greatly over peptide synthetic reactions in general. Dr. Wang stated, “A man has to dream, and then will there be innovations.” Because of that, he was always daring to try new things and share this wisdom of success with all.

    Dr. Wang was examined to have had diabetes in 1990. At the time, it was fashionable to drink Wheat Grass juice to cure diabetes, so he thought it may have substances that lowers the blood glucose level. Therefore, other than asking his graduate students and assistants to do purification and experiments on cells and rats, he also tested it on himself by taking the reading of his blood glucose level before and after he drink wheat grass juice. Finally, it was found that wheat grass juice do have substances that lowers blood glucose level. From this, we realize that Dr. Wang is truly a daring and challenge-loving scientist.

    On the night of 1994, in Academician conference, Dr. Wang’s graduate students were watching the news broadcasting in a room on the 2nd floor of NTU’s Institute of Biological Chemistry of Academia Sinica that was reporting the list of names of the elected academician. After three words of Kung-Tsung Wang were read, everyone jumped for joy. The same year, he was hired to be the special researcher of Institute of Biological Chemistry of Academia Sinica.
    The composite of his achievements from 1958’s polyamide thin layer chromatography, 1971’s utilization with solid phase synthesis to synthesize snake poison protein’s optical isomers, to 1987’s microwave application on chemical reactions shown that Dr. Wang being elected as academician was truly just as concrete and substantial as it was reputable and honorable.

    On October 19, 1999, by the arrangement and planning of many students, 70-year-old Kung-Tsung Wang, gave a speech of honorable retirement. And those who attended the gala of his retirement were all his good friends and dear students. Everybody gathered together to honor the retirement of a good friend and respected teacher. It constituted a touching scene. In order to accelerate the progress of Taiwan’s Bioorganic chemistry and the continuance of the studies on that subject, Dr. Wang founded the Kung-Tsung Wang Educational Foundation of Bioorganic chemistry in the October of the year 2000. This enables more young students and scholars to have the opportunity to have face-to-face conversations with world-renowned scientists. The foundation will award a world famous scholar who has greatly dedicated to the field of Bioorganic chemistry and invite him or her to give a speech on his research experiences; thereby inspire those of whom that are younger in this field, thus speeding up the development of Bioorganic Chemistry development in Taiwan. Dr. Wang truly was a scientist who has influenced the field of chemistry in Taiwan deeply and profoundly. His curiosity and courageous and innovative spirit serve as a model for young people to learn from.

中央研究院生物化學研究所
台北市南港區研究院路二段一二八號
Tel：2787-1268　Fax：27883473
E-mail：wangfoun@gate.sinica.edu.tw