Dr. Yao-ping Wang: Saving China’s Children

Dr. Yao-ping Wang

Dr. Yao-ping Wang, Professor in the Department of Pediatric Hematology/ Oncology at Shanghai Children's Medical Center, has devoted much of his career to the treatment of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia in China, where remarkable progress is being made in improving survival rates. Now, the nationally recognized pediatric oncologist is expanding his leadership role in pediatric medicine to encompass all of Asia. Serving as president of the Chinese Pediatric Oncology Society since 2001, Dr. Wang was recently elected as the president of the International Society of Pediatric Oncology-Asia (SIOP-Asia). “I am trying my best to serve the entire Asian children's population,” he says, “in countries where the main problem is not the cancer protocols, but the economics.”

Dr. Wang graduated from Shanghai Second Medical University in 1961, and then joined the Department of Pediatrics in the University's Xin-Hua Hospital as a resident, then attending physician and Vice Chief. He moved into pediatric hematology/oncology in 1979 as an Associate Professor, and in 1994 was promoted to Chief Clinician and Professor in the Department of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology. With the support of the Hope Foundation, the Shanghai Children's Medical Center opened in June 1999 with a dual mission: to serve as a national training center for healthcare professionals and to provide state-of-the-art clinical care for the children of China. It was the first such hospital in China and set the standards for others to follow. Members of the medical staff also hold positions in the University's Xin-Hua Hospital.

In the early 1980s, Dr. Wang received training in pediatric hematology/ oncology at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. It was then that he became familiar with bone marrow transplantation, and today he is taking advantage of advanced Western protocols, including stem cell transplantation, in his patients' treatment. He also spent some time in 1994 conducting research at St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. That year, he attended the SIOP meeting in San Francisco, California, where he first met Ian Magrath. Dr Wang has been involved with INCTR since its inception.

Presently, Dr. Wang and his colleagues - most of whom have been trained in the United States, Canada, Germany or France - are conducting cutting-edge research in the treatment of leukemia and advanced malignant solid tumors. Of 27 children participating in a recent clinical trial of autologous stem cell transplantation, 22 are now disease-free, he says. Four died of relapse five months after transplantation, and a fifth patient with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is alive, although with disease, 17 months after the procedure. These results were published in the November 16, 2003, edition of the journal Blood.

But despite these sophisticated treatment approaches, Dr. Wang is well aware of the basic problems pertaining to the care of children with cancer in China.

“No matter how good the protocol,” he says, “it won't work if the patients don't have access. We have to solve the problem of economic support.”

Dr. Wang, in his role as a national leader, is attempting to solve this problem by lobbying drug companies to donate drugs for use in young cancer patients and by encouraging China's Minister of Health to recognize the value of pediatric oncology in a country where the average monthly income is $100 USD, and where each family is permitted to have only one child.

“If a child under five has cancer, the family will sometimes give up, because they can have another child,” Wang says. “If the child is older, the relationship between parents and child is much stronger, and the parents will do everything they can to save their child.”

Wang's message to his government, and to other Asian nations, is that childhood cancer is highly curable. “With acute lymphoblastic leukemia there's a 70-80% cure rate achieved with chemotherapy that is not very expensive” he says. “We use less intense treatment dosage in Shanghai and can still get good results. Our task as researchers is to develop simple but effective treatment protocols for the lowest and intermediate risk groups, which account for the majority of cancers, are the most curable, and cost less to treat.”

Today Dr. Wang is completing the circle his parents - both physicians - started when they encouraged him to enter the field of pediatrics. “My job now is to help young doctors in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. In my 40 years I've treated lots of patients. In my home I have two volumes of photographs of children whose lives have been saved. That is a wonderful gift.”

Marcia Landskroener for INCTR