tag > China
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How 20 Smuggled Chinese Hamsters Built a Pharmaceutical Empire
Chinese Hamster Ovary, or CHO, cells are widely used in the pharmaceutical industry. And, incredibly, these cells can be traced back to just twenty hamsters that were packed into a crate and smuggled out of China in the 1940s.
Chinese scientists had been using these hamsters — native to northern China and Mongolia — to study pathogens since at least 1919. The hamsters were unusually well-suited to scientific research because they have short gestation periods (18-21 days), a natural resistance to human viruses and radiation, and it was thought, early on, that they possessed just 14 chromosomes, making them easy to work with for mutation studies. (They actually have 22 chromosomes.)
During the Chinese civil war, a rodent breeder in New York named Victor Schwentker worried that, if the Communists won the war, he’d never be able to get his hands on these special rodents. So in 1948, Schwentker sent a letter to Robert Briggs Watson, a Rockefeller Foundation field staff member, and asked him to “acquire” some hamsters so he could begin breeding them.
Watson collected ten males and ten females and packed them into a wooden crate with help from a Chinese physician (who was later imprisoned for this act). Watson slipped the crate out of the country on a Pan-Am flight from Shanghai, just before the Communists took control.
In New York, Schwentker received the hamsters and then began breeding and selling them to other researchers.
In 1957, a geneticist named Theodore Puck, intent on creating a new mammalian “model system” for in vitro experiments, learned about the Chinese hamster and contacted George Yerganian, a researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, to obtain a specimen. Yerganian shipped Puck one female hamster.
Puck took a small piece from this hamster’s ovary, plated the cells onto a dish, and passaged them repeatedly. He eventually isolated a clone that could divide again and again; an “immortalized” CHO cell with a genetic mutation that rendered it immune to normal senescence.
Today, descendants of these immortalized CHO cells make about 70 percent of all therapeutic proteins sold on the market, including Humira (
CHO cells are well suited to biotherapeutics because they can perform a biochemical reaction called glycosylation. Many human proteins, including antibodies, are decorated with chains of sugars that control how they fold or interact with other molecules in the body. Only a few organisms, mostly mammalian cells and certain yeasts, can do this chemical reaction.
I first learned about this history from a really spectacular article in LSF Magazine, called "Vital Tools: A Brief History of CHO Cells." I recommend it. (You can find it with a quick search.)
Video
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Sending a message: Beijing issues documents without Word format amid US tensions
For the first time, China’s Ministry of Commerce issued policy announcements in documents only accessible via domestic software last week
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"Six Records of a Floating Life" (浮生六記) - an autobiography by Shen Fu (沈復, 1763–1825), who lived in Changzhou (now Suzhou) during the Qing dynasty (PDF)
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Six Records of a Floating Life (浮生六記) is an autobiography by Shen Fu (沈復, 1763–1825), who lived in Changzhou (now Suzhou) during the Qing dynasty. PDF
"Beast-clouds swallow the sinking sun, and the bow-moon shoots the falling stars" (兽云吞落日, 弓月弹流星.)
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Life is long and strange. You never know what time will bring. It's young xi jinping
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Listening All Night to the Rain: Selected Poems of Su Dongpo (Su Shi) (苏轼) (1037-1101)
Seeking lodging on a rainy night at Pure Life Monastery
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Listening All Night to the Rain: Selected Poems of Su Dongpo (Su Shi)
Original Lyric Poem Calming Wind and Wave (定風波):-
莫聽穿林打葉聲, 何妨吟嘯且徐行;
竹杖芒鞋輕勝馬, 誰怕? 一蓑煙雨任平生;
料峭春風吹酒醒, 微冷, 山頭斜照卻相迎;
回首向來蕭瑟處,歸去, 也無風雨也無晴。
Stop listening to the rain pattering on leaves,
Why not enjoy a stroll, and sing your heart out?
Giving up the horse for sandals and a cane – who would mind?
A straw cloak may be all I need in misty rain.
The spring breeze wakes me up from drowsiness – a bit chilly.
The setting sun warms me though with embracing rays.
Turning back, still mindful of that cold and wretched place.
Now that I have arrived – home at last,
Nothing stirs me any more, the glaring sun, the wind or the rain.
Su Shi (苏轼), also known as Su Dongpo (苏东坡), lived from 8th January 1037 to 24th August 1101. He was a prominent figure in the Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE) as well as a poet, calligrapher, writer, painter, gastronome, pharmacologist, and statesman. His father Su Xun (苏洵) gave him the name Shi (轼) after an ornate armrest usually fixed on the front section of Chinese carriages, as a reminder to the boy to pay heed to how he appeared in public.
Likewise, his father named his brother Su Zhe (苏辙) after wheel tracks left by carriages, to imply that the boy should leave a good impression on others and in his life. Apart from his given name, Su Shi was also known by his courtesy name Zizhan (子瞻), meaning “little forward-looking one”, and his pen-name Dongpo Jushi (东坡居士), meaning “east slope householder”. However, he is most commonly referred to as Su Dongpo.
As a statesman, Su Shi was a significant political figure in the Song Dynasty. He was associated with historian and politician Sima Guang (司馬光), and went against the New Policy Party led by Wang Anshi (王安石), a notable Chinese economist, statesman, chancellor and poet. Known for his expressive style, Su Shi’s writings provided clarity of understanding for Song Dynasty topics such as travel and the iron industry. Both his father and brother were also famous scholars.
In addition, Su Shi’s poetry enjoyed a long period of popularity and influence in China, Japan, and other nearby countries, as well as in English-speaking parts of the world through translations by Arthur Waley and others. In the field of Chinese arts, Su Shi is often thought to be “the leading personage of the 11th century”, and had a famous Hangzhou dish named in his honour, Dongpo pork.
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Shi Qian in the branches of a tree by moonlight shining his lantern toward the ground.
