On September 29th 2020, NARLabs celebrated the inauguration of Dr. Genie Chin as Director General of our National Laboratory Animal Center (NLAC), beginning her term as the first woman to head the center on October, 1st. Having served at NLAC since 2008, she is well-acquainted with its operational workings. NARLabs President Kuang-Chong Wu has thanked outgoing Director General Chun-Keung Yu for his nine years of dedicated work, and hopes now Director General Chin will continue leading the center in providing the preclinical animal resources and verification procedures required for biomedical development. By heavily relying on the NLAC’s experience in animal testing resources and management, NARLabs expects the center to become an unrivaled backbone for interdisciplinary biomedical research and the precision health industry.
After earning a bachelors at NTU’s School of Veterinary Medicine and a doctorate degree in genetic and developmental biology from the University of Connecticut, Dr. Chin returned to Taiwan in 2005 as a research supervisor and attending veterinarian at Level Biotechnology Inc. She then moved to the NLAC in 2008 and has served as head of the center’s Planning and Promotion Division, deputy-director general and chief veterinarian.
Fields such as genetic engineering and genetic diseases, animal disease modeling, animal testing science and medicine all form Director General Chin’s research expertise, having won the AFLAS-ICLAS Young Investigator Award, and served in the board of directors of the Asian Mouse Mutagenesis Resource Association (AMMRA), as well as in the steering committee of the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC). During her time at NLAC, she assisted former Director General Yu in establishing a cross-species core platform and supporting a national bio-tech development plan, while also founding the Rodent Model Resource Center (RMRC) to promote both foundational and applied research.
As Director General Chin pointed out, President Tsai Ing-wen had emphasized during her presidential inaugural speech this year that "creating a biotechnology and medical technology industry of global significance" is one of the government's "six core strategic industries". Minister Wu Tsung-Tsong of the Ministry of Science and Technology also highlighted the importance of "deepening the biotech medical industry and precision medicine" in his proposed six core areas for achieving 2030 goals in science and technology. The NLAC is currently implementing the policies set out by the Ministry of Science and Technology. Having operated in the field of biomedicine for many years, it has established a number of core technologies required for precision medical research, including the Patient Derived Xenograph (PDX) Bank for domestic cancer patients, human intestinal microbial transplantation technology, genetic engineering technology, and more. After having taken office, Director General Chin will commit to the promotion of interdisciplinary integration, introduce an abundance of domestic communication data and semiconductor research, and develop forward-looking preclinical trial models. She also hopes to establish a preclinical field verification procedure required for the interdisciplinary integration of biomedicine, a system which would promote the vigorous development of precision medicine research among the country’s academic circles.
