People born in the year of the monkey like Dr. Min Wang are
supposed to be tenacious problem solvers. An animal lover, Dr. Wang’s problem
was a haunting statistic that kept him up at night. Almost 2.7 million healthy, adoptable cats
and dogs—about one every 11 seconds—are put down in U.S. shelters each year.
The answer in Dr. Wang’s eyes was a better, faster, less-invasive
solution to surgical spaying and neutering and for the past 25 years he has
doggedly pursued this challenge. His
diligent work has given new life to a product first introduced almost a decade
ago, but is today being launched as Zeuterin™; this time, with an improved training protocol in
place. Enthusiasts are hoping the new protocol of thoroughly training veterinarians
on its use will make Zeuterin one of the most exciting breakthrough strategies
in pet population control in this century.
As Research and Scientific Partner at Ark
Sciences, a global animal pharmaceutical product company, Dr. Wang was
paramount in bringing Zeuterin to the U.S. marketplace this past February when
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) manufacturing approval came through.
The product is a one-time injection done under the supervision of a certified
veterinarian for male dogs 3 to 10 months of age that renders the dog
permanently sterile.
Dr.
Wang’s history of meeting the challenges of population control started with the
human species many years ago in China.
“I
came to America in 1989 to study male reproductive research at the Center of
Reproductive Science and Technology, School of Medicine, University of Missouri
– Columbia,” Dr. Wang recalls. “I worked
with my mentor and friend, the late Dr. Mostafa Fahim.”
By that time, Dr. Wang had already made a name for
himself as Director of the Center of Birth Control and Regulation and Associate
Director of Human Embryology and Histology at Xi’anMedical University in the
study of male contraception and infertility. Dr. Wang received his medical
degree in 1978 and his graduate degree in biological reproduction in 1984 from Xi’anMedical
University, Xian,
Shaanxi.
Today,
more than 7,000 miles and a million memories lie between his native China and
what is now his home in Columbia, Mo. and where his research program is
based. Ark Sciences Research and
Development is located at MU (University of Missouri) Life Sciences Business
Incubator at Monsanto Place.
The
Early Years
A
long and arduous journey led this poor farmer’s son from a small country
village to a top university in China to a brilliant career in both human and
animal population control.
Dr.
Wang was born in 1956. His rural
countryside home in the Shaanxi Province was 200 miles from Xi’anCity
where he attended medical school.
“It
was a completely country and traditional farm life I had growing up. For generations, my family worked the land,
growing wheat and corn when the weather permitted; which wasn’t often, and the
soil was very poor,” he said. For most
of the families in the countryside, including Dr. Wang’s family, hunger was
almost a constant companion.
Although
farming had been his family’s occupation for generations, it was his
grandfather, a man who only knew how to write his last name, who set him on a
different course.
“My
grandfather told me that I had to do better than farming. He told me, ‘you have to get an education,’ ”
Dr. Wang said.
In
China at that time around the Cultural Revolution beginning in 1966, getting an
education was almost an impossible task. When Dr. Wang was barely a teenager,
the government shut down the schools.
For several years, until free education was allowed again, Dr. Wang read
everything he could get—old newspapers, discarded books—anything to continue
his path of self-study.
Finally in 1972, Dr. Wang was able to return to high school
and graduate at age 16. He immediately began teaching at a local elementary
school upon graduation from high school.
Later, he passed the rigorous entrance exams of one of
China’s most prodigious medical universities, Xi’anMedical University, and was
accepted—something like only 1 percent of those who apply are accepted.
“Education would have
been my choice to study had I had a choice,” Dr. Wang said. “But in my country, while the education is
free, the choice as to what to study is not.
I was placed in the medical school to become a doctor.”
“From the country to the city was very
exciting, but shocking. I was only 19
and making my way around a city of millions of people when I had been used to a
small rural community. The University gave you a bed roll to sleep upon and
that was about it.”
Population, Policy and Hope
After obtaining his graduate
degree in 1984, he began his work at the Center of Birth
Control and Regulation. Dr. Wang threw himself into researching strategies to deal with
China’s serious population problem.
Families were not allowed to have more than one child under most circumstances.
The policy was introduced in 1979
to alleviate social, economic and environmental problems. The
controversial policy has been implicated in an increase in forced
abortions, female infanticide and under-reporting of female births.
Dr. Wang, who has one daughter,
understood then and now the reasoning behind China’s population control
measures. As a six-year-old child, he
lived through the 1962 massive famine that caused some 30 million deaths. “China had to do something; people were
starving to death,” Dr. Wang said. Those
memories, along with the knowledge that he might one day make the lives better
for his four half-sisters drove his research in those early years.
“The birth control
methods that were widely used then were products only for women. The birth
control pill first introduced in China was a very high dosage and many women
had side effects. An IUD would not work
on poor women who sometimes were so undernourished that their bodies would
reject the IUD,” Dr. Wang said. “And not
everyone wanted a surgical option.”
“I focused on the male
sperm function,” he said. “This area was
new and difficult because it was necessary to reduce the sperm without reducing
the testosterone in men.”
Above all in those
early years, Dr. Wang said, he adopted a life-long commitment to creating
products and strategies that would do no harm to the human body. “It’s not enough that a product be effective;
it has to be safe,” he said. That
guiding principle would follow him throughout his research life, extending
eventually to his research with animals.
In 1984, the Chinese Academy of Science chose
Dr. Wang as the Young Research Fellow of the Year and awarded funds to continue
the male contraception and infertility research. In 1986, the Chinese Family
Planning Commission awarded Dr. Wang funds to pursue research and development
of a spermicidal agent for male contraception.
Dr.
Wang and his team created one of the first Chinese spermicidal products; it was
made from an extract of a peach tree leaf and used for several years before
newer products were introduced.
“Those were years of celebration. I was young;
I could work long hours. It was greatly satisfying work,” he said.
Coming to the U.S.—and Staying
Because of the nature of Dr. Wang’s research and its
importance to China’s population control policy, he was given an opportunity to
travel to the United States in June 1989. He came to the U.S. as a visiting scholar to participate in
male reproductive research at the Center of
Reproductive Science and Technology, a unit
of the School of Medicine at the University of Missouri in Columbia.
From a bustling city of more than eight million people to
sleepy, little Columbia with its population of about 100,000, was the quintessential meaning of culture shock.
“It was summer and school was out,” said Dr. Wang. “I felt like the whole town was
deserted. It was hard; I couldn’t find
food that I was used to eating; I was living in a small dorm room in a little
town whose streets were all but empty of people and I could barely speak
English. This was not the exciting
America I had seen on television.”
His saving grace was the researcher he came to study under, Dr. Mostafa Fahim. “Dr. Fahim was a very good person; he
encouraged me and drove me everywhere,” Dr. Wang recalled.
Dr. Fahim’s research in using therapeutic ultrasound as a strategy
for male contraception fascinated Dr. Wang.
Only now is Dr. Fahim’s research in that area meeting with renewed
interest amongst population control groups, like the one funded by the Gates
Foundation.
What was supposed to have been a three-month stint in Columbia
turned into a life-long endeavor.
“I had a chance to do
research in New York and Houston, but after some adjusting, I realized that (MU) was the place for me,” he said.
Dr. Fahim went on his behalf to China in October 1989 and asked
the Chinese government if he could “borrow” Dr. Wang for another six
months. Since their research continued
to look for solutions in human reproduction and results were freely shared
between countries, the government agreed.
Eventually, Dr. Wang asked for and was granted a two-year work visa, and
after that, he applied and received permanent residential status. In 1995, he
became a United States citizen.
In addition to ultrasound, Dr. Fahim was also doing
breakthrough research in the role that the nutrient zinc plays in the male
human reproduction system. Dr. Fahim was
Egyptian and research had been underway for several years investigating how a
zinc deficiency in Egyptian males could create growth abnormalities and
sterility.
“I thought the study of zinc was very exciting and had a lot
of possibility to help the human race,” Dr. Wang said. “Dr. Fahim and I were
close friends and shared the philosophy that product has to be effective; but
first, it has to be safe.”
From Human to
Humane
After about a year
researching the zinc deficiency theory working toward a human population
control technique, it became clear that a more pressing problem was under the
researchers’ nose right here in the United States—millions of unwanted and
homeless pets were being euthanized each day at U.S. shelters. And, globally, millions and
millions of strays were roaming the streets of third world countries; some
spreading the deadly rabies virus.
“There was also a sea change in the way Americans were
viewing their pets,” Dr. Wang said. “They
were no longer just possessions; they had become family members. And no one wants to see a family member
euthanized.”
Could a less invasive, cheaper and safer mean of
sterilization be an answer to the homeless pets problem?
The answer, Dr. Wang and Dr. Fahim realized had been proven
time-and-time again in their laboratory studies using a zinc mixture to
sterilize male dogs. What followed were
nine years of lab research and four years of clinical trials and studies
conducted at top veterinarian hospitals and shelters across the country. The
trials perfected the product and the procedure of giving male dogs of a certain
age an injection in their testes. From
there, it was a matter of the long and thorough road to FDA approval.
“As noble the cause, nothing would have been possible without
those early angel investors who were all animal lovers and who, at that time,
took a real leap of faith in us and our vision,” Dr. Wang said.
Finally in 1991, Dr. Fahim received a patent on a product
that eventually was used in the U.S. and Mexico during the early 2000s called
Neuterisol. But its roll-out in the U.S.
was short-lived because the company introducing it did not take proper
precautions to train veterinarians on how to use it. “The injection site and the amount have to be
very precise,” Dr. Wang said. “It came
to market in the U.S. with little training support offered to
veterinarians. The product was sound,
but the training protocol was lacking.”
Now, a decade later, another company who currently owns the
patent is dedicated to not making that same mistake. Ark Sciences received FDA approval to
distribute Zeuterin in the U.S. this past February. The roll-out has been very
methodical and focused on extensive veterinarian training on its use. Veterinarians must be certified through an
online course and actual operating time to be approved to use Zeuterin in their
practices and in shelters.
Zeuterin, which gets its name from a combination of “zinc”
and “neutering,” works by causing fibrosis, or scarring, in the tubules that
produce sperm in a dog. The trained veterinarians sedate the dogs, apply the
shots and then reverse the sedation. Since the procedure still leaves the dog
looking intact, the dogs are also given a tattoo "Z" on the inside of
their left leg to indicate that they can no longer reproduce.
The product is being met with great enthusiasm from animal
control and homeless animal advocates across the country as a safe and effective
solution to surgical neutering. Currently, in the U.S., it is only approved for
male dogs 3 to 10 months old. But Dr.
Wang said that it is only
a matter of time before the product will be approved in the
U.S. for use in older dogs, as is already the case outside the U.S.
One of the healthy benefits of Zeuterin, Dr. Wang believes,
is that some of the testosterone of the male animal is left
intact. Studies have been published
throughout the years, most recently in 2013 from the University of California
at Davis, about the health effects of surgically neutered and spayed dogs, especially those under one year of age. But more research is needed, Dr. Wang
cautions. As with surgical
castration, Zeuterin may or may not eliminate male behavior such as roaming,
marking, aggression or mounting in dogs. Formal statistical evidence comparing
neutering via zinc versus castration is not yet there.
What the Future
Holds
There is still much work to be done in the area of humane
population control for animals. Dr. Wang’s research continues on ways this non
surgical approach could benefit groups of animals other than just companion
animals--from farm to zoo to animals in the wild.
Dr. Wang will get there. With the support of his wife, Shiela (her
English name), and that of their grown daughter, Yang Wang, he is certain his
work will advance and be used to alleviate human and animal suffering across
the globe. He’s receiving recognition
for that work, too. In 2013, the Alliance for
Contraception in Cats & Dogs (ACCD) presented Dr. Wang a Special
Achievement Award during its 5th international symposium on
non-surgical methods of pet population control in Portland.
But for Dr. Wang, there is one dream not yet realized. In what seems to be a cruel twist of fate,
his wife is allergic to pets. Dr. Wang dreams of one day settling down on a big
farm with lots of outside pets. He’s
looking particularly for a black lab and beagle mix. This was his first and only pet he owned in
China growing up.
When food was scarce, he would share with “Dog.” The next “Dog,” will surely have plenty of
food and the love of a good man whose legacy will be creating a world in which
every pet is wanted and loved, and where the starvation, sickness, and the
killing of homeless pets can finally stop.
