Chi-Huey Wong is a Taiwanese-American biochemist. He is currently the Scripps Family Chair Professor at the Scripps Research Institute, California in the Department of Chemistry. He is a member of the United States

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

, won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry and the RSC Robert Robinson Award. and has published more than 700 papers and holds more than 100 patents.

Education

Wong received his BS and MS in Biochemical Sciences from National Taiwan University in Taipei, followed by his PhD in chemistry in 1982 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the direction of Professor

George M. Whitesides George McClelland Whitesides (born August 3, 1939) is an American chemist and professor of chemistry at Harvard University. He is best known for his work in the areas of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, organometallic chemistry, molecula ...

to study the use of enzymes as catalysts in

organic synthesis Organic synthesis is a special branch of chemical synthesis and is concerned with the intentional construction of organic compounds. Organic molecules are often more complex than inorganic compounds, and their synthesis has developed into one o ...

Research and career

Wong continued his postdoctoral research work with

at Harvard University from 1982 to 1983, then began his independent career at Texas A&M University in the Chemistry Department. During his tenure at Texas A&M University, he went through the ranks including assistant professor, associate professor, and professor of chemistry. Wong was appointed as the

Ernest W. Hahn The Hahn Company, San Diego, California, alternately known as Ernest W. Hahn, Inc., was a major American shopping center owner and developer from the 1950s to the 1980s. Purchased by the Trizec Corp. in 1980 (which then took the name TrizecHahn), ...

Chair and Professor of Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute and while he was a faculty member at Scripps, he also served as head of the Frontier Research Program on Glycotechnology at Riken in Japan and Director of the Genomics Research Center at

Academia Sinica Academia Sinica (AS, la, 1=Academia Sinica, 3=Chinese Academy; ), headquartered in Nangang, Taipei, is the national academy of Taiwan. Founded in Nanking, the academy supports research activities in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from ...

, and was later appointed by the President of the Republic of China (Taiwan) as the President of Academia Sinica. Now, he is serving at the Scripps Research Institute as Scripps Family Chair Professor of Chemistry. Wong is best known for his original contributions to glycoscience, especially his development of chemo-enzymatic methods for the practical synthesis of oligosaccharides and

glycoprotein Glycoproteins are proteins which contain oligosaccharide chains covalently attached to amino acid side-chains. The carbohydrate is attached to the protein in a cotranslational or posttranslational modification. This process is known as glycos ...

s and the hierarchical and programmable one-pot synthesis method for the rapid preparation of a large number of oligosaccharides. The original synthetic methods developed by Wong along with his work on the development of glycan microarrays for the high-throughput analysis of protein-carbohydrate interaction and the design of

glycosylation Glycosylation is the reaction in which a carbohydrate (or ' glycan'), i.e. a glycosyl donor, is attached to a hydroxyl or other functional group of another molecule (a glycosyl acceptor) in order to form a glycoconjugate. In biology (but not al ...

probes have enabled not only the fundamental study of glycosylation in biology but also the clinical development of carbohydrate-based medicines, including vaccines and homogeneous antibodies for the treatment of cancers and

infectious diseases An infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable dise ...

. In 2016, there was a media report, speculating that he was possibly involved in an insider trading scandal related to a biotech company

OBI Pharma, Inc. OBI Pharma, Inc. () () is a bio-pharmaceutical company, based in Nangang District, Taipei, Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwe ...

headquartered in Taiwan, because his adult daughter had held shares in OBI Pharma. When the allegations surfaced in March 2016, Wong was in the United States. He was quite disappointed by the false report and attempted to resign his position as president of the Academia Sinica twice. Both requests were rejected by the president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou. After further consideration, Ma chose to approve Wong's resignation on 10 May. In February 2018, the Shilin District Prosecutors Office announced that charges of insider trading against Wong had been dropped, though an investigation into a possible failure in disclosing his assets during tech transfer of his invention had not yet concluded by the Control Yuan. In April 2022, the Control Yuan publicly announced that Wong did not violate any rule.

Awards and honors

*1985 - Searle Scholar Award *1986 -

Presidential Young Investigator Award The Presidential Young Investigator Award (PYI) was awarded by the National Science Foundation of the United States Federal Government. The program operated from 1984 to 1991, and was replaced by the NSF Young Investigator (NYI) Awards and Presiden ...

in Chemistry *1994 - IUPAC International Carbohydrate Award *1998 - Harrison Howe Award, American Chemical Society *1999 - International Enzyme Engineering Award *1999 - Claude S. Hudson Award, American Chemical Society *2000 - United States Presidential Green Chemistry Award *2005 - American Chemical Society Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry *2008 - F.A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research *2012 -

Arthur C. Cope Award The Arthur C. Cope Award is a prize awarded for achievement in the field of organic chemistry research. It is sponsored by the Arthur C. Cope Fund, and has been awarded annually since 1973 by the American Chemical Society. It consists of $25,000, ...

by the American Chemical Society. *2014 - Wolf Prize in Chemistry *2015 - Robert Robinson Award, Royal Society of Chemistry *2021 - Welch Award in Chemistry *2022 -

Chemical Pioneer Award The Chemical Pioneer Award, established in 1966, is awarded by the American Institute of Chemists to recognize chemists or chemical engineers who have made outstanding contributions to advances in chemistry or the chemical profession. Recent rec ...

of the American Institute of Chemists

Memberships

Wong was elected as a member of the

in 1994, the American Academy of Arts and Science in 1996, the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2002, the

World Academy of Sciences The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) is a merit-based science academy established for developing countries, uniting 1,000 scientists in some 70 countries. Its principal aim is to promote scientific capacity and excellence for sustainable deve ...

in 2007, the United States National Academy of Inventors in 2014, and also an Associate Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2010.

Bibliography

* Enzymes in Synthetic Organic Chemistry. Pergamon Press. 1994. * Carbohydrate Based Drug Discovery. Wiley Online Library. 2003. * Current Status and New Challenges in Glycoscience. Springer.

Patents

Wong obtained many patents for his inventions. His representative patents include Globo-H and related anti-cancer vaccines with novel glycolipid adjuvants (US9,603,913B2), Glycan arrays on PTFE-like aluminum coated glass slides and related methods (US8,680,020), Methods and compositions for immunization against virus (US8.741,311), Large scale enzymatic synthesis of oligosaccharides (US9,340,812), Methods for modifying human antibodies by glycan engineering (US10, 087,236), Compositions and methods relating to universal glycoforms for enhanced antibody efficacy (US10,023892), Crystal structure of bifunctional transglycosylase PBP1b from

E. Coli ''Escherichia coli'' (),Wells, J. C. (2000) Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Harlow ngland Pearson Education Ltd. also known as ''E. coli'' (), is a Gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, rod-shaped, coliform bacterium of the genus ''Escher ...

and inhibitors thereof (US9890111B2), Quantitative analysis of carbohydrate-protein interactions using glycan microarrays: determination of surface and solution dissociation constants (US-8906832-B2), Antibiotic compositions and related screening methods (US8916540B2), Hirsutella Sinensis mycelia compositions and methods for treating sepsis and related inflammatory responses (US8486914B2), and Tailored glycoproteomic methods for the sequencing, mapping and identification of cellular glycoproteins (US7943330B2).

References

External links

Chi-Huey Wong's researchChi-Huey Wong – Semantic ScholarChi-Huey Wong – Google Scholar
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wong, Chi-Huey 1948 births Living people American biochemists Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Members of Academia Sinica Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences National Taiwan University alumni People from Chiayi County Scripps Research faculty Taiwanese biochemists Taiwanese emigrants to the United States Texas A&M University faculty Winners of the Nikkei Asia Prize