Exclusive | China-born neuroscientist Jane Wu lost her US lab. Then she lost her life
The death of Wu, a prominent researcher at an Illinois university, has put attention again on efforts to pursue researchers suspected of having undisclosed ties to Beijing
Ling Xin in Ohio
Published: 4:00am, 31 Aug 2024
For molecular biologist and cancer researcher Bing Ren, Jane Wu was a “true role model”.
She was warm, caring and inspiring – and guided Ren’s decision to make the area of research his life’s work.
“Dr Wu taught me basic molecular biology skills, and showed me how discoveries were made at the bench,” said Ren, who first met Wu in 1993 and worked under her direct supervision at Harvard University.
“Dr Wu was the one that opened my eyes to the wonderful world of molecular biology, and convinced me to pursue a career in this field,” said the professor in cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California, San Diego.
Wu was a prominent neuroscientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and left her mark on many other researchers in both the United States and China before taking her life in July.
The 60-year-old former Dr Charles L. Mix Research Professor at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine took her own life in her Chicago home on July 10, according to Cook County records.
In addition to the personal tragedy for Wu’s family and friends, the scientist’s death drew attention yet again to much criticised efforts to pursue researchers suspected of having undisclosed ties to Beijing.
The most high-profile of these efforts was the China Initiative, which was launched in 2018 during the Trump administration to counter alleged economic espionage and technological theft from China. It was heavily criticised for unfairly targeting people of Chinese descent and scrutinising them about issues unrelated to espionage. In 2022, the programme was officially terminated by the Biden administration.
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US government’s main agency for biomedical and public health research and the main funder for Wu’s decades-long research at Northwestern University, started a similar but separate programme around the same time as the China Initiative.
In the past six years, more than 250 scientists – most of them of Asian descent – have been identified as having failed to disclose overlapping funding or research in China, or having broken other rules. There were only two indictments and three convictions as legal outcomes of those investigations, yet 112 scientists lost their jobs as a result.
The NIH Office of Extramural Research declined to say whether Wu was a target but a source informed about the matter said there were investigations of Wu.
“The investigations killed her career,” said Xiao-Fan Wang, a distinguished professor in cancer research at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
Without naming Wu, advocacy group APA Justice said the lab at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine of a prominent Chinese-American researcher in neurology and genetics who died on July 10, 2024, had been shut down.
“She was such a devoted scientist. Denying her the right to do research was like taking away the most important thing in her life,” Wang said.
Peter Zeidenberg, a Washington-based lawyer who has represented dozens of scientists of Chinese descent facing US government prosecutions over their alleged China ties, said Wu had been his client.
Born in Hefei, Anhui province in 1963, Wu graduated from Shanghai Medical University in 1986 and went on to earn her doctorate in cancer biology from Stanford University in the US.
She did postdoctoral research at Harvard University and spent a decade at Washington University in St Louis as an assistant and then associate professor in paediatrics, molecular biology and pharmacology before joining Northwestern University in 2005.
Wu’s research at Northwestern focused on two interconnected biological processes known as RNA splicing and regulatory RNA-binding proteins, according to molecular geneticist Adrian Krainer from the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory in New York.
The processes are key to understanding and treating neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, frontotemporal dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, said Krainer, who co-organised a science conference with Wu in the 2000s.
“I remember her as a kind and caring person,” Krainer said. “She was very devoted to training the next generation of scientists in both the US and China.”
In 2009, Wu was recruited by the Chinese government under the Thousand Talents Programme to help run a lab and train students at the Institute of Biophysics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
The programme sought to lure top mainland-born scientists in the US to return to China, either on a full-time or part-time basis.
But it would become a major target of the NIH foreign interference investigation.
She was such a devoted scientist. Denying her the right to do research was like taking away the most important thing in her life
It is not clear if Wu’s involvement in the programme was a trigger for an NIH investigation.
Northwestern University has not responded to multiple inquiries from the Post since July. Wu’s profile page on the medical school, where she worked for about two decades, has disappeared. Other web pages, such as her publication and grant records on the Northwestern Scholar website, have also been deleted.
“The university’s reaction is rather unusual,” said a Chinese-American biologist based in Ohio, who did not wish to be named. “Normally, the school or the university would publish an obituary and keep the faculty’s webpage for a period of time.”
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Wu was buried at the Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago on July 17, according to a funeral arrangement notice drafted by her two children, who declined to talk to the Post.
To Haipei Shue, president of United Chinese Americans, a non-profit organisation based in Washington and the largest Chinese-American coalition, Wu’s death is a “tragic coda to the now-defunct China Initiative”.
“It demonstrated once again the unbearable human cost of this programme to many innocent Chinese-American scientists.”
Wang, from Duke University and former president of the Society of Chinese Bioscientists in America, said the research community had been devastated by Wu’s death.
“It’s hard to believe such a familiar and upbeat colleague has left us,” he said.
Structural biologist Yifan Cheng from the University of California, San Francisco was also at a loss.
Cheng said Wu gave him a printout copy of Banksy’s painting, Girl with Balloon, right after he finished the Chicago Marathon in 2018.
That was their last meeting. “I still have it in my office,” he said. “It’s a big loss to the scientific community that such a talented scientist is now away from us forever.”
Additional reporting by Holly Chik
