Lifesaver

When Hou returned to China in 1962, the country was in no better shape than when he left. Disease, drought and famine ravaged the land.

He immediately started researching viruses at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, focusing on the various strains of parainfluenza that were devastating rural China.

"Hou had many ideas for important projects, yet scientists didn't even have enough to eat, let alone funds for labs or equipment," said Duan Zhaojun, Hou's former student who is now a researcher at the CDC.

"Most of the time we had to improvise and make our own equipment. Hou would share his own precious chemicals that he had brought back from overseas with us young students," he added.

Despite the harsh conditions, Hou was able to isolate three strains of parainfluenza in the lab. His breakthroughs paved the way for more detailed analysis of the pathogen and the creation of a vaccine in the decades that followed, even though China's pharmaceutical companies and market didn't really begin to develop until the 1980s.

"Hou insisted that the country needed its own pharmaceutical manufacturer, one capable of producing high-quality Chinese-patented drugs," said Cheng Yongqing, a colleague and executive manager at Beijing Tri-Prime Gene Pharmaceutical Co, which Hou helped to found in the basement of his lab in 1992 and is now worth 9.6 billion yuan ($1.45 billion).

As chief scientist for national biotechnology projects from 1987 to 1996, Hou oversaw the creation of 18 genetically engineered drugs, eight of which he personally created.

The medicines were used to combat serious illnesses ranging from hepatitis to leukemia. They saved millions of lives and boosted China's pharmaceutical market from 200 million yuan in 1986 to 20 billion yuan in 2000, according to the CDC.

"He singlehandedly built China's genetically engineered medicine industry from scratch, and played an invaluable part in accelerating the development of modern medicine in China," Wu said.