3 scientists win Hong Kong’s Shaw Prize for developing therapy for rare leukaemia

Anne Dejean, Hugues de The and Chen Zhu share US$1.2 million life sciences and medicine prize for work on acute promyelocytic leukaemia

Three life scientists from mainland China and France have won Hong Kong’s Shaw Prize for developing a therapy that has turned a rare form of leukaemia from deadly to widely curable.

Professor Emerita Anne Dejean, Professor Hugues de The and Professor Chen Zhu have won in equal shares the life sciences and medicine prize of the Shaw Prize, which has been dubbed the “Nobel Prize of the East”.

The three academics were recognised for their discovery of the molecular and cellular bases of acute promyelocytic leukaemia, a rare and aggressive form of blood cancer, as well as pioneering a synergistic targeted therapy that greatly reduced the mortality of the disease.

Dejean, of the Institut Pasteur in France, de The of the College de France and Chen of Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s school of medicine, were previously given the Sjoberg award from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for their work on acute promyelocytic leukaemia in 2018.

For the Sjoberg award, the three scientists were honoured for their targeted treatment using retinoic acid and arsenic, instead of traditional chemotherapy, to treat the rare form of leukaemia.

The scientists had mapped out the molecular mechanisms of the cancer, identified a specific genetic mutation and helped destroy a faulty protein in affected cells to stop a process that could result in death for three out of four patients.

With this treatment, the cancer cells disappear because they lose the ability to renew themselves.