Close-up

Anh Wartel tells Hong Xinyi how indelible childhood memories as a refugee inspired her life’s work in clinical research

Dengue expert Anh Wartel on the inspiration behind her work in clinical research

Anh wartel is someone who always knew exactly what she wanted to do in life. “As a little girl, I already knew I wanted to be a doctor, and I never changed my mind,” says the petite powerhouse, who was born in Vietnam, grew up in France, and is now based in Singapore as vaccine producer Sanofi Pasteur’s regional medical expert for dengue in the Asia-pacific. Fulfilling her childhood ambition was no easy feat. Anh attended medical school in Paris, where her cohort numbered over a thousand students in the first year. Of these, only 170 survived the academic culling to make it to the second year. This highly competitive environment was a suitable start for a vocation that demands intense resilience. Clinical researchers face daunting odds—a vaccine can take decades to perfect and, on average, only 20 per cent of the drugs in development will ultimately be deemed safe and effective enough for use. “With science, you need a lot of humility,” Anh believes. “It can be a bumpy road, and you never know if you will succeed or fail. You need to accept that.” Ask her where she got her resilience from, and she immediately points to her father, who started out as a surgeon in Vietnam. Her family left the country because of the Vietnam War, spending some time in a Malaysian refugee camp before settling in Paris in 1978. Anh was six years old at the time, and she has a vivid memory of sitting beside her father in the camp as he treated patients. “I can recall it perfectly,” she says with a smile. “As a doctor, people really rely on you, and that relationship of trust and the ability to serve people, that’s the beauty of the job to me.” She also remembers arriving in Paris in winter, and seeing snow for the first time as she disembarked from the plane. (She even asked her parents if the swirling flakes were mosquitoes, perhaps foreshadowing her work with mosquito-borne diseases.) Her father’s medical credentials were not recognised in France, so “he had to start from scratch, and go back to medical school as a 40-year-old with three kids”, she recalls. His perseverance continues to inspire her. Now 80 years old, he is still a practising doctor, she says proudly. Anh was supposed to take over his practice, but found herself drawn to clinical research because she felt she could make a broader impact. She played an instrumental role in leading the team that developed the world’s first dengue vaccine, which has been approved for use in 16 countries, and is now available in 11 of these, including Singapore. Her work in dengue has spanned the past 13 years, including five spent in a remote area of Vietnam observing dengue patterns among schoolchildren. “Dengue is a very intriguing disease. It’s caused by four viruses, which contributes to the complexity of developing a vaccine,” she observes. “This disease has been around for over 70 years, and over 70 per cent of global dengue cases happen in Asia. That is a tremendous burden on families, communities and healthcare systems.” Now that a breakthrough has been achieved in the form of a vaccine, she is looking forward to turning her attention to even more complex diseases. She worked on HIV treatments, including a first attempt at a therapeutic vaccine, for a few years in the early 2000s, and “I want to go back to that. I’m not done with HIV yet”, says Anh, who is married to a fellow doctor and the mother of two boys. The world could well see a HIV vaccine one day. “A lot of companies are looking into that, including ours. With an alliance of researchers and scientists looking into the same problem, things can move much faster.” The same goes for diseases such as Ebola and Zika, she believes. “We still need a lot of commitment from scientists and governments to support the prevention of outbreaks and vaccine development. All the vaccines you are familiar with have already tackled the simple diseases. The ones left are the challenging ones.”