TAINAN, Taiwan
Professor Shaw-Jeng Tsai from the Department of Physiology at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), southern Taiwan, was awarded the “2014 Distinguished Scientist Award” by the American Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine (SEBM), becoming the second in the nation to be awarded this great honor.
The award ceremony for the “2014 Distinguished Scientist Award” was took place on April 27, at the SEBM Annual Meeting, San Diego.
Every year, through nomination and careful review by the scientific committee, a couple of outstanding individuals from the biomedical field are awarded the Distinguished Scientist Award and, this year, the honor went to Professor Tsai and another scientist from Russia.
Regarding the award, Professor Tsai professed his gratitude to the SEBM for their appreciation of his work, humbly stating that the key to success must be attributed to the help from many, including students, assistants, and the support from school funding.
He also said, “I’m very grateful to the willing participants in the trial, who provided samples that helped further studies.”
Professor Tsai’s research includes the mechanism of endometriosis, and how cancer cells develop resistance.
According to Tsai, endometriosis is a common disease for females in general, with a high 10-15% chance of contracting the disease in women of reproductive age, but to date, there is no method of treatment.
Tsai began expanding on the research roughly 10 years ago, publishing related papers in 2010, and also discusses cooperation matters with several British and American pharmaceutical companies, hoping to suppress endometriosis in the near future.
In the course of treatment, many cancers develop resistance, rendering the treatment ineffective, and Professor Tsai also studied why the cells produce change.
Through methods of molecular biology and bioinformatics, he found that the greatest reason is because the cells induce hypoxia when under stressed conditions, which stimulates the hypoxia-inducible factor, thereby causing changes in the gene regulatory networks.
As such, he “hopes to develop a mild method that causes cell to die on their own, by finding new drugs to fight cancer.”
Established in 1903, SEBM encourages biomedical research, particularly through promoting interdisciplinary exchanges. It has more than 1,000 members and selects one or two outstanding biologists for the Distinguished Scientist Award every year.
CONTACT
NCKU News Center
Sonia Chuang, +886-6-275-7575 ext. 50042
sonia20@mail.ncku.edu.tw
