Tradition Mixes with Technology

At Taiwan's TCM Biotech, Ya-Chun Wang converts ancient Chinese secrets into modern pharmaceuticals - and gets the FDA to pay attention.

Written byBob Grant

| 7 min read

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Ya-Chun Wang's first brush with modern pharmaceuticals occurred in a chicken coop in the southern Taiwanese county of Tainan. More than 30 years ago, Wang snoozed on the floor of that coop as a three-year-old while his fowl-farming parents vaccinated their flock through the night. Rather than taking over his family's successful farm, however, the adult Wang let his scientific curiosity lead him to Taiwan's burgeoning biotech sector.

Today, he is the executive vice president and chief scientific officer at TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) Biotech International in Taipei, and he is piloting TCM-700C, the company's fungus-derived drug, through clinical trials for hepatitis C. In 2004, TCM-700C got the first US Food and Drug Administration investigational new drug (IND) status ever awarded to a botanical drug in Taiwan, and it is one of only a handful of botanical drugs now in FDA-approved clinical trials in the country. "This was a pretty ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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