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Tony Mok: leading light in Hong Kong oncology
Perspectives
Profile Tony Mok: leading light in Hong Kong oncology It’s not always easy to pinpoint the moment your life or career changed direction. But Tony Mok had no problem finding an answer to this question. An established oncologist with a booming practice in Toronto, Canada, Mok dropped by the Prince of Wales Hospital, the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s major teaching hospital, for a casual “look around” when he was visiting his parents in Hong Kong. He was introduced to the head of the Oncology Department and by the end of the encounter was presented with a job offer. It was a surprise, says Mok. But he took the offer seriously and decided it was a chance he should not pass up. “How did I make that decision? I knew that if I stayed in Toronto I would be the same guy for the rest of my life.” Mok’s present life is light years away from how he expected to live working in a community-based practice in Toronto. Since his change of career, Mok has contributed to more than 100 academic papers in international medical journals, covering everything from the role of Chinese medicine in managing chemotherapy-induced toxicity to tyrosine kinase receptor inhibitors in non-small-cell lung tumours in Asian patients, and he has also evolved into a media star. An invitation to write about health for one of Hong Kong’s major Chinese language newspapers led to a regular column, some books, and, eventually, a television series on health. Most recently, he has branched out into presenting a food programme for one of Hong Kong’s Chinese language television channels. It is not exactly Nigella Lawson meets Yan Can Cook—Mok, an easygoing, genial man guides two young women chosen for their looks and gastronomic interest around some of Hong Kong’s finest restaurants—but it has earned him medical media star status in Hong Kong. Mok made that life-changing decision in 1995, 2 years before the British handed Hong Kong back to China. While many Hong Kong citizens left, those who stayed during the 1990s moved up the career ladders rapidly. Mok found he was well behind his academic peers when he began work in Hong Kong. “I was the poorest thing there was (in academic terms)—I had zero papers, I had spent 7 years in private practice. I was older than the others. I had written nothing.” Although sent to Canada in 1976, Mok says it was his mother’s unease with the harsh academic environment in Hong Kong, rather than fear of a future under communist Chinese rule, that motivated her to pack him off to North America. “My mother looked at me and decided I would do better in Canada…If you had the opportunity, you studied abroad”, Mok explains. His elder brother had been dispatched to Alberta a decade earlier; so sending the then 16-year-old Mok to join his sibling seemed the obvious next step. The logic was not so obvious to Mok, who wanted to become a marine biologist. “It is in the middle of nowhere www.thelancet.com Vol 375 February 6, 2010
and there is no ocean anywhere near there—just lots and lots of snow.” But, like generations of dutiful Hong Kong sons before him, Mok put his dreams aside, studied hard, and earned an undergraduate place in the faculty of medicine at the University of Alberta. “After 3 years of residency I couldn’t decide between gastroenterology and oncology. Gastroenterology had a lot of new gadgets at that time, but oncology was challenging. It was an area that had a big future.” He went on to complete a fellowship in medical oncology at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. Although returning to Hong Kong enabled Mok to develop into an outstanding medical communicator, Mok says it has come at considerable personal cost. Moving his wife and young family from their comfortable home and social milieu to cramped housing and social isolation in Hong Kong proved too hard. 2 years after the move, the marriage ended. But in career terms, Mok found himself the right man in the right place. “I didn’t know what to do—I had no special academic interest. My vision of research was to write papers on whatever I can—do whatever study the others didn’t want to do. So I looked at pancreas, colon, and lung cancers. In the late 1990s there was a shift in thinking, people were starting to look at Asia.” Mok helped set up the Lung Cancer Research Group, one of the first such multicentre groups in the Asia Pacific region, which now includes researchers from Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Sydney, Guangzhou (China), and Japan. Professor Michael Boyer, Director of Sydney Cancer Centre and professor at the University of Sydney, who co-founded the Lung Cancer Research Group with Mok, says: “Tony is one of those special people who not only has great ideas, but also has the energy to implement them, and the charisma to get others to follow. He is a real leader, who has dramatically increased the profile of Asian lung cancer research.” Alongside his work in multicentre cancer trials, Mok is a professor in the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Department of Clinical Oncology, with research interests that encompass lung cancer, liver cancer, and traditional Chinese medicine. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Guangdong Province People’s Hospital in Guangzhou and a Guest Professor at the Peking University School of Oncology, Beijing. Although he has come a long way from that life he thought would never change in Toronto, Mok says it was the experience he gained working as a physician in Toronto that has been his best guide: “I think what has helped me most is that I have been a community oncologist—it gives me a more humane view, and helps me to put these complex research questions in simple language.”
Margaret Harris [email protected]
To watch a video of Tony Mok see http://www.ecancer medicalscience.com/tv/videoby-category.asp?play=81&cid= 2&scid=24&q=
453
Profile Tony Mok: leading light in Hong Kong oncology It’s not always easy to pinpoint the moment your life or career changed direction. But Tony Mok had no problem finding an answer to this question. An established oncologist with a booming practice in Toronto, Canada, Mok dropped by the Prince of Wales Hospital, the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s major teaching hospital, for a casual “look around” when he was visiting his parents in Hong Kong. He was introduced to the head of the Oncology Department and by the end of the encounter was presented with a job offer. It was a surprise, says Mok. But he took the offer seriously and decided it was a chance he should not pass up. “How did I make that decision? I knew that if I stayed in Toronto I would be the same guy for the rest of my life.” Mok’s present life is light years away from how he expected to live working in a community-based practice in Toronto. Since his change of career, Mok has contributed to more than 100 academic papers in international medical journals, covering everything from the role of Chinese medicine in managing chemotherapy-induced toxicity to tyrosine kinase receptor inhibitors in non-small-cell lung tumours in Asian patients, and he has also evolved into a media star. An invitation to write about health for one of Hong Kong’s major Chinese language newspapers led to a regular column, some books, and, eventually, a television series on health. Most recently, he has branched out into presenting a food programme for one of Hong Kong’s Chinese language television channels. It is not exactly Nigella Lawson meets Yan Can Cook—Mok, an easygoing, genial man guides two young women chosen for their looks and gastronomic interest around some of Hong Kong’s finest restaurants—but it has earned him medical media star status in Hong Kong. Mok made that life-changing decision in 1995, 2 years before the British handed Hong Kong back to China. While many Hong Kong citizens left, those who stayed during the 1990s moved up the career ladders rapidly. Mok found he was well behind his academic peers when he began work in Hong Kong. “I was the poorest thing there was (in academic terms)—I had zero papers, I had spent 7 years in private practice. I was older than the others. I had written nothing.” Although sent to Canada in 1976, Mok says it was his mother’s unease with the harsh academic environment in Hong Kong, rather than fear of a future under communist Chinese rule, that motivated her to pack him off to North America. “My mother looked at me and decided I would do better in Canada…If you had the opportunity, you studied abroad”, Mok explains. His elder brother had been dispatched to Alberta a decade earlier; so sending the then 16-year-old Mok to join his sibling seemed the obvious next step. The logic was not so obvious to Mok, who wanted to become a marine biologist. “It is in the middle of nowhere www.thelancet.com Vol 375 February 6, 2010
and there is no ocean anywhere near there—just lots and lots of snow.” But, like generations of dutiful Hong Kong sons before him, Mok put his dreams aside, studied hard, and earned an undergraduate place in the faculty of medicine at the University of Alberta. “After 3 years of residency I couldn’t decide between gastroenterology and oncology. Gastroenterology had a lot of new gadgets at that time, but oncology was challenging. It was an area that had a big future.” He went on to complete a fellowship in medical oncology at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. Although returning to Hong Kong enabled Mok to develop into an outstanding medical communicator, Mok says it has come at considerable personal cost. Moving his wife and young family from their comfortable home and social milieu to cramped housing and social isolation in Hong Kong proved too hard. 2 years after the move, the marriage ended. But in career terms, Mok found himself the right man in the right place. “I didn’t know what to do—I had no special academic interest. My vision of research was to write papers on whatever I can—do whatever study the others didn’t want to do. So I looked at pancreas, colon, and lung cancers. In the late 1990s there was a shift in thinking, people were starting to look at Asia.” Mok helped set up the Lung Cancer Research Group, one of the first such multicentre groups in the Asia Pacific region, which now includes researchers from Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Sydney, Guangzhou (China), and Japan. Professor Michael Boyer, Director of Sydney Cancer Centre and professor at the University of Sydney, who co-founded the Lung Cancer Research Group with Mok, says: “Tony is one of those special people who not only has great ideas, but also has the energy to implement them, and the charisma to get others to follow. He is a real leader, who has dramatically increased the profile of Asian lung cancer research.” Alongside his work in multicentre cancer trials, Mok is a professor in the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Department of Clinical Oncology, with research interests that encompass lung cancer, liver cancer, and traditional Chinese medicine. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Guangdong Province People’s Hospital in Guangzhou and a Guest Professor at the Peking University School of Oncology, Beijing. Although he has come a long way from that life he thought would never change in Toronto, Mok says it was the experience he gained working as a physician in Toronto that has been his best guide: “I think what has helped me most is that I have been a community oncologist—it gives me a more humane view, and helps me to put these complex research questions in simple language.”
Margaret Harris [email protected]
To watch a video of Tony Mok see http://www.ecancer medicalscience.com/tv/videoby-category.asp?play=81&cid= 2&scid=24&q=
453