z-bio 2025-11-13 3051

　　In July 2025, outside the outpatient building of Peking University Cancer Hospital, an old farmer carried a basket full of grapes and insisted on waiting for Professor Shen Lin to get off work - "Five years ago, you said, 'Let's find a solution together.' Now I can eat and grow grapes in the fields!" In November of the same year, the list of candidates for the election of academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was announced, and Professor Shen Lin's name was prominently included.

　　Professor Shen Lin broke the hard nut of "advanced gastrointestinal tumors = death sentence" and used kindness to catch every life on the verge of despair - and these deep cultivation and breakthroughs are the core confidence for her to become an academician this time.

　　Professor Shen Lin

　　Scientific research breaks the situation: three "world's firsts" build the hard power of academician candidates

　　1. The world’s first CLDN18.2 CAR-T therapy: turning “6 months left” into “5 years of survival”

　　In the past, patients with advanced gastric cancer and esophageal cancer were often judged to have "at most 6 months left" once chemotherapy failed. However, Shen Lin's team wants to challenge the internationally recognized problem of "difficult targeting of CAR-T in solid tumors" (like accurately locating ants in concrete, which is extremely difficult). She led the world's largest clinical study of CLDN18.2 CAR-T, and the results after treatment of 98 late-stage patients shocked the industry:

　　Nearly half of the patients’ tumors shrank significantly (overall response rate 42.2%), and 90% of patients’ condition no longer worsened (disease control rate 91.1%);

　　Patients with gastric cancer/gastroesophageal junction cancer benefited more significantly, with more than half of the tumors shrinking (remission rate 54.9%), and no serious side effects occurred.

　　In 2024, this result will be published in Nature Medicine. Now that the second phase of research has ended, it will be able to apply for marketing by the end of 2025 - more patients who have been "sentenced to death" will regain their lives.

　　Thesis title: Claudin18.2-specific CAR T cells in gastrointestinal cancers: phase 1 trial final results; DOI: 10.1038/s41591-024-03037-z.

　　2. Establishing a “human tumor model library” in 10 years: finding precise antidotes for patients to “test drugs”

　　Shen Lin's team transplanted the patient's tumor tissue into mice and built a "human tumor model library" containing more than 200 samples. These mice are like "life substitutes" and can help patients screen the most effective drugs in advance.

　　A patient with advanced esophageal cancer failed multiple lines of treatment and even drank water. The team found suitable new drugs through model screening. Now, five years later, the patient can eat normally and walk for one hour every day.

　　Relying on this model library, the team discovered 36 new treatment targets, promoted 32 new drugs into clinical practice, and even submitted the research on "epigenetic therapy to prevent metastasis" to the main journal of Nature - in the future, patients with esophageal cancer will no longer have to worry about "secret metastasis" of cancer cells after surgery.

　　Thesis title: Epigenetic therapy inhibits metastases by disrupting premetastatic niches; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2054-x

　　3. Reduce the cost of “10,000-yuan injections” to the price of medical insurance: Make medicine affordable for ordinary families

　　Professor Shen Lin led the research on sugemalimab, which extended the median survival time of patients with advanced gastric cancer by 4.2 months, becoming the world's first PD-L1 monoclonal antibody approved for gastric cancer indications; the vedicitumab combination therapy led by her team expanded the benefit for patients with HER2-positive gastric cancer from 15% to 27%.

　　Thesis title: Distamab vedotin (RC48) plus toripalimab for HER2-expressing advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction and other solid tumors: a multicentre, open label, dose escalation and expansion phase 1 trial; DOI: 10.1016/j.eclinm.2023.102415

　　More importantly, as the leader of the Gastric Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Standards Team of the National Health Commission, she promoted the inclusion of 12 domestic anti-cancer drugs in medical insurance, with an average price reduction of 56% and a maximum reduction of 72%. In the past, a pill cost tens of thousands, but now, after medical insurance reimburses it, ordinary working-class families can afford it.

　　The benevolence of doctors: From the emergency room to the frontier, interpreting the spiritual core of academician candidates

　　The original intention of the emergency room: "Saving a person is saving a family." In 1983, Shen Lin, who had just graduated, worked as a resident doctor in the emergency department of the Affiliated Hospital of Xuzhou Medical College. Once, she rescued a patient with myocardial infarction until dawn. The patient's first words when he woke up were "It's good to be alive" - she remembered this sentence for 42 years. She would look through the medical records late at night and think about what she could do better. Even if she worked overtime until late at night, she would read the last medical record.

　　In 1992, Shen Lin studied under Professor Jin Maolin of Peking University Cancer Hospital. "The teacher holds an umbrella for the patient, and I want to protect more people from the rain." Now when faced with terminal patients who tremble and ask "how long can they live?", she never says "no way", but holds their hands and says: "We don't say 'no way' first. Doctors should not only treat the disease, but also light the way forward."

　　Doctor Shen Lin squats and asks patients. Source: People's Daily Online

　　"We cannot let patients miss out on life-saving opportunities just because they live far away." Shen Lin took the lead in building a digestive system tumor MDT platform covering 32 provinces and cities across the country - patients can enjoy joint consultations with multidisciplinary experts locally, and so far it has helped 102,000 people. She often goes to Qinghai and Gansu for free clinics every year. In Yushu, Qinghai, she teaches local doctors step by step how to read CT films, formulate plans, and helps the county hospital establish a tumor diagnosis and treatment process. The popular science book "In the World" she wrote is full of real stories about oncologists and patients. The title page reads: "Fighting cancer is not a one-person battle, we go together."

　　Passing on the fire: Let the "China Plan" protect more people

　　Today, Professor Shen Lin has trained more than 100 graduate students and has taken root in tertiary hospitals across the country. 20 of them have become subject leaders and 10 of them have become doctoral supervisors. Her request to her students is simple: "Teach you to be a doctor I can trust with confidence when I am sick."

　　Shen Lin (first row, center) and her team members

　　She took the lead in writing more than 40 diagnosis and treatment specifications, including the NCCN Chinese version of the gastric cancer and colorectal cancer guidelines—Chinese patients now have “Chinese standards” that are more in line with their own genes and living habits.

　　As a member of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, she submitted a proposal to "accelerate the approval of new anti-cancer drugs" and promoted the establishment of a "fast track for urgently needed clinical drugs" to shorten the approval time for new drugs by nearly half. In the past, patients had to wait a year to use new drugs, but now they can wait half a year. One more day of waiting will bring more hope.

　　This selection into the list of candidates for co-optation of academicians is the highest tribute to her 41 years of medical practice. Regardless of the final outcome, the mark she has left in the field of digestive tract tumors has already become a valuable asset to the Chinese oncology community and continues to illuminate the path of survival for more patients.