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The Unforgettable
Ergang Shi By
Wallace L. McKeehan, Ph.D. Mentor
Ergang Shi was among the Visiting Scientists and
students recruited by Gordon Sato
(Sato et al, 2018) to the
W. Alton Jones Cell
Science Center in Lake Placid, NY on a series of seminar visits to diverse
institutions in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) in the early 80's.
I was a senior faculty member and assistant director to Dr. Sato.
Ergang received his Ph.D. degree via Clarkson University in Potsdam,
NY while doing dissertation research required for the degree under my mentorship at the Cell Center
in Lake Placid.
The two institutions were about 70 miles apart, a 1.5-hour drive by
car under best conditions which were sometimes treacherous.
Classroom presence in Clarkson in basic chemical biology was minimal while
advanced specialty courses and research time was maximal
in the Cell Center. Sato student
recruitments from the PRC were provided a one-way air ticket to Lake Placid
and a promise of housing and a small stipend.
Upon arriving at the airport in New York city, most students thought
they had arrived at their destination in New York city, and surprised to
learn that Lake Placid, a village of about 2200 permanent residents, was
another 300 miles north in the isolated high peaks of the Adirondack
Mountains with cities of significant size--Albany, NY and Montreal,
Canada--over 100 miles away.
Ergang used the same approach to anything he did whether work or play, they were not two different things to him. He went all out to conquer hurdles of both. He was trained in physical chemistry and had very little background in biology. Ergang was among those offered to come to Lake Placid because of Sato's attraction to intellect and vision in the sciences over the technical aspects of applied laboratory sciences. In Sato's view, one was born with the former and with that attribute could easily learn the latter by experience. Ergang was an independent spirit who enjoyed most discovering and achieving things on his own his own way. After rotating through several labs, Ergang landed in my lab under my mentorship, one whose style of mentorship was learned from Gordon Sato and who appreciated Ergang's basic qualities and had the patience to let them unfold. Ergang was integrated into a team comprised of Mikio Kan, a senior scientist from Japan, and Jinzhao Hou, another physical chemist from Tsinghua University, and the technical staff of our laboratory. We were in a race to biochemically characterize FGF receptors traced by binding of radiolabeled FGF. We thought a hepatoma cell line (HepG2) might be a good source that could be scaled up in cell culture as starting material. True to his character, Ergang studied 24-7 every piece of theoretical literature about growing cells in culture and isolating products from them. In those days the internet was just developing and the Cell Center had a small and limited library. Nonetheless, Ergang was first to check the new arrival literature in the library every day. Ergang was involved in scale up and mass production of
HepG2 cells via roller bottles and right away found the simple theoretical
does not always immediately work in the real world of the laboratory.
Instead of preliminary testing his culture media and cells small scale, he rushed into a scale
up of about 16 bottles. Upon
checking the warm room the next day every bottle was contaminated.
He was devastated and felt a total failure as a molecular biologist
using cell culture. As all
successful experimental scientists learn during a week of failures, with a
little encouragement and nudging he
rebounded from the disaster ready to start even with more enthusiasm on
Monday. In a moment of frustration, I
recall Ergang did describe my mentorship as "squeezing the last drop of
water from a wet towel." We eventually isolated the
candidate protein, sequenced part of it, cloned the gene coding for it,
expressed it and demonstrated that it was not the FGF receptor (DiSorbo et
al, 1988; Hou et al, 1994).
It was not until 14 years later in my laboratory it was revealed that the
protein we isolated may be as important as FGF receptors and involved in prevention of
diverse cancers in general at their earliest origin (Liu et al, 2009). Ergang was
introduced to hybridoma technology in continuing structure-function
experiments to characterize FGF receptor isoforms using epitope specific
monoclonal antibodies (Kan et al, 1991; Xu et al, 1992) and it is around
this he built his final PhD thesis (Shi, 1988-1992). Ergang
applied the same enthusiasm (sometimes overenthusiasm) and competitiveness
he applied in the lab and the degree program to extracurricular activities.
For example, at our basketball games comprised of students and
faculty over in the Lake Placid High School gym, he was always the first on a fast break down court, but often
forgot the importance of taking the ball along or catching it and putting it
in the basket.
Ergang was a leader among his colleagues in
overcoming the cultural isolation of the Lake Placid setting and the harsh
winter of the mountains which sometimes brought down blankets of snow and
ice and temperatures which dropped to as low as negative 40 where Centigrade
and Fahrenheit converge. Ergang
often drove the Cell Center van provided for students to commute the 50 plus
miles between Lake Placid and Potsdam, even in the dead of winter.
In the spring he once could not resist local farmers who advertised
their ducks and eggs by the roadside.
We received a complaint that one of our personnel was violating their
rental contract by housing ducks in their apartment bathtub.
The quacking late at night was disturbing the neighbors.
It was Ergang who was planning to provide and cook fresh Beijing duck
in the Adirondacks. He led trips
to Montreal to China town markets to bring to the group sticky rice and
other basics for authentic Asian food cooking in Lake Placid.
An old ski dormitory called Pine Lodge was purchased by the Sato
program to provide the promised housing for new arrivals to the Cell Center.
The lodge was a center of Chinese culture and cooking.
Ergang integrated his science with a philosophical and
political world view. In addition to persistence in mastering every
aspect of the specific science project, he obviously was a voracious student
of world literature and current events beyond his science. He was a leader of the show of solidarity of a
group of Cell Center students with the Tiananmen Square student uprising of
1989. He was able to acquire at
low or no cost surplus Clarkson University commencement gowns which the
students sewed together to construct their "Our Hearts Bleed" banner in
their show of solidarity with the students back home in China.
The banner was used in a solidarity march in Washington DC to which
the Cell Center students traveled as a group, a trip partially supported by
the faculty via personal donations.
Like the great majority of students recruited from the PRC by Gordon Sato and trained at the Cell Center during the period (1983-1993), Ergang went on to postdoctoral research training and to continue the Gordon Sato style of teaching and mentorship to others. Ergang employed his personal qualities of can-do hard work, enthusiasm, optimism, and vision and what he learned at the Cell Center at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for over 20 years touching many just as he had been touched by the close-knit family in the Gordon Sato program of the Cell Science Center in the little mountain town of Lake Placid, NY. Although good student teacher relationships are always a two way exchange, it turns out Ergang Shi taught me as much or more than I taught him. References
Kan, M., E. Shi and W.L. McKeehan (1991)
Identification and assay of heparin-binding (fibroblast) growth factor
receptors. Methods Enzymol. 198:158-171. Shi, E. (1988 - 1992) PhD Thesis: Structure/Function of FGF Receptors. Xu, J., M. Nakahara, J.W. Crabb, E. Shi, Y. Matuo, M. Fraser, M. Kan, J. Hou and W.L. McKeehan (1992) Expression and immunochemical analysis of rat prostate and human heparin-binding fibroblast growth factor receptor (flg) isoforms. J. Biol. Chem. 267:17792-17803. Once Upon an Ergang--TP Times (Intimate look at his career at Regeneron) Chemotherapy Notes: Light in the Valley of Life by Ergang Website dedicated to the memory of Ergang Shi. Note by the author WLM: I contacted Ergang in late June 2021 asking for an update in his contact information and current activities, unaware of his cancer diagnosis. His reply: "Hi, Dr. McKeehan, It's a wonderful feeling in my heart when I see your name today. It's you and Dr. Sato who planted the seed in me on life science research concept and trainings. Looking back now, I feel tremendously grateful and fortunate! I joined Regeneron at early 2001 as a scientist. I've done ok over the years. I'm currently a sr. fellow scientist in Therapeutic Proteins Department. There are two groups under my supervision: the membrane technology group (2 scientists, 2 RAs) to generate purified multispan membrane targets (GPCRs, ion-channels, tetraspans) for drug development and to support in-house CryEM studies; a regular protein preparation group (3 scientists, 16 various RAs) for most of the company's small scale up-stream protein reagents for drug development....... Guang, my first son is working as a lawyer at San Diego.....and second son Jacob is at UC Boulder CO. Jacob likes to play guitar. Actually I often think about you and Lake Placid time when watch and listen him playing. Please send my warm regards to your wife and your daughter. Best wishes, Ergang"
Last modified 09-12-22 |
