Q1 During last quarter’s all-hands meeting, we were all attracted by your extensive personal experience. Would you share more details with us?
As I have shared during the previous all-hands meeting, I grew up in Taiwan, China. After graduating from National Tsing Hua University, I went to the United States for advance study in 1987. I obtained my Master degree from Ohio State University and Ph.D. degree from Purdue University, majoring in Biochemical Engineering.
After graduation, I went back to Taiwan and became a teacher. One year later, I came to realize the business appeared more attractive to me. Since then I have dedicated myself to biopharmaceutical industry for over 20 years. Early in my career, my focus is on process development for antibody and vaccine, including orphan drugs for treatment of rare disease. During my work in Bristol-Myers Squibb, I experienced a major transition from research and development to external manufacturing, during which I was responsible for technology transfer and external manufacturing of several commercial products, including Opdivo, an anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody（mAb） and Yervoy, an anti-CTLA-4 mAb . Prior to joining Henlius, I served as Head of Chemistry Manufacturing Control (CMC) in Pieris Pharmaceuticals, taking charge of CMC operation and manufacturing.
Considering my personal career experience, I’d like to encourage young people to be more open-minded. Don’t get limited by your background. Just believe that everything is possible.
Q2 Would you like to share with us the largest reason why you joined Henlius?
It was 2018 when I first met Scott, the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Henlius. We are like-minded, and we both hope to bring affordable biologics to improve patients' lives through developing new technologies, reducing production cost and promoting the market access of products. The vision of Henlius - to provide innovative and affordable medicines for all patients - attracts me to come back and join the company. Considering the rather limited CMC talent pool in China, I hope I could bring my experience of CMC to Henlius to improve the company’s technical operations, thus promoting the development of the local biopharmaceutical industry.
Q3 What’s your routine work in Henlius ? And would you like to share your future plan for the Technical Operations Department with us?
The Technical Operations Department breaks down into three major functions, namely technology, manufacturing and project management, including Process Development (PD), Bridging Manufacturing (BM), Manufacturing Support (MS) and Chemistry Manufacturing Control (CMC). PD team is responsible for process development in the early stage of the project. BM team leads manufacturing in investigational new drug (IND) stage and then transfers manufacturing work to commercial manufacturing team at later clinical stage, during which, MS team provides technical support. CMC team is mainly responsible for the project management from IND process development to commercial launch.
In Technical Operations, we have a rather complete organizational structure but CMC team is lacking experienced talents – a common phenomenon in a young industry of China. Therefore, we are brewing an internal talent development project, which will be released in the near future. Potential targets of the project are people who have interest in CMC operations and are equipped with progress development knowledge. We can turn them into our key CMC team members if they could be given more compliance training and working experience!
In the days to come, we will put more energy to strengthen MS team and improve the leadership of CMC team. We will continue to perfect PD team in advanced technical area such as continuous manufacturing process – one of our key ambitious goals in 2020.
Q4 Could you please share with us your hobbies in daily life?
I enjoy traveling in my leisure. I travelled a lot in my previous jobs in order to visit my CMO vendors. I have been to a lot of places all over the world, including Paris (France), Munich (Germany), Copenhagen (Denmark), Switzerland and Australia. For sports, I like skiing and swimming. I also enjoy listening to music and playing the guitar for my pressure management.
Q5 Could you share with us your future plan at work and expectation of your stay in Henlius?
With my extensive experience in technical operations, I want to build a global Technical Operations department, together with Henlius’ established advantages in cutting-edge platform, advanced and innovative manufacturing technology and outstanding business model, to position Henlius as a leading company in Chinese biopharmaceutical industry.
