Dr. Fu-Kuen Lin (林福坤)
Dr. Fu-Kuen Lin (林福坤, born 1941) is a Taiwanese American biochemist and the inventor of Epogen (Epoetin Alfa / 促紅血球生成素), a DNA-engineered medicine that has treated millions of anemic patients with chronic renal failure worldwide. His work at Amgen marked the beginning of the biotech revolution and earned him international recognition.
Identity Snapshot
Primary work page: |Toward A Community of Hope (work & sources)
Full text (GitHub): complete extract
- English: Dr. Fu-Kuen Lin
- Also seen: Lin Fu-kun — Hanyu gloss in the 2017 roster title. TAH #8 uses Fu-Kuen Lin.
- Chinese: 林福坤
- Born: 1941, Keelung (基隆市), Taiwan
- Education: B.S. plant pathology, National Taiwan University (1964); M.S. plant pathology, NTU (1967); Ph.D. plant pathology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1971)
- Key employer: Amgen, Thousand Oaks, California (1981–retirement)
- Key discovery: Recombinant human erythropoietin (EPO) gene, patented 1983-12-13
- Roles: Biochemist; scientist; inventor
- Organizations: Amgen; 安進公司
Early Life and Education
Lin Fu-kun was born in 1941 in Keelung City’s Anle District, Taiwan. He was the fifth of eight children (two older sisters, two older brothers, two younger sisters, one younger brother). His father practiced traditional Chinese medicine (中醫師), was skilled in bone-setting, and had even served as a special physician for the police force.
Lin attended Anle Elementary School in Keelung, then the Provincial Keelung Water Production School for junior high, and Keelung Municipal High School for senior high. After high school, he entered National Taiwan University’s Zoology Department, later transferring to Plant Pathology.
In 1964, he completed his bachelor’s degree and served as a reserve second lieutenant in the Navy headquarters at Zuoying (左營海軍總部) for one year. After his reserve officer discharge in 1965, he returned to NTU and worked under Professor Wu Long-xi (吳龍溪) on fungal physiology research, earning his M.S. in plant pathology in 1967.
Doctoral Studies
In 1967, through Professor Wu’s recommendation, Lin received a research assistant scholarship from Dr. David Gottlieb at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Gottlieb was a renowned authority in antibiotic research and was, notably, Wu Long-xi’s own doctoral advisor — making him Lin’s “grand-advisor.”
Lin pursued his Ph.D. while single. During this time, he enjoyed typical graduate student life: fishing in rivers, hiking to view autumn maple leaves, and socializing with fellow Taiwanese students. In 1971, at age 30, he successfully completed his doctoral dissertation.
Postdoctoral Wanderings
After leaving the University of Illinois, the U.S. was caught between the space race and the Vietnam War, which drained the treasury and caused an economic downturn. The biotech field’s funding dried up after the Apollo program’s peak. Finding biotech research positions was extremely difficult, and most available funding went to cancer research.
Lin’s first postdoctoral position was at Purdue University, researching cancer cell questions. This was a shift from his previous work on fungal biochemistry to human medical research. However, the techniques were similar enough that the transition was manageable.
A notable anecdote from this period: During the summer of 1972, Purdue hosted the Midwest Taiwanese Softball Tournament, with over 10 teams and nearly 500 attendees. The local Taiwanese community provided meals for everyone. To prepare a Taiwanese dish of “five-spice” (五香), the community asked students to help catch fish from a nearby dam. The high-educated anglers caught so many fish that they filled several trash cans with ice in a bathtub, creating a strong fish odor throughout the house — and had to ask Lin to store the fish in his lab’s large freezer.
In 1972, Lin married 高雲娟 (Gao Yunjuan), a high school classmate, at Purdue.
After Purdue, Lin moved to the University of Nebraska’s tumor biology laboratory for further postdoctoral research, studying how hormones affect the formation of breast cancer precursor cells in mice. This was a common postdoc arrangement — funding depended on professors writing grant proposals, and research topics were professor-determined. After four years of postdoc奔波 (hustling), Lin felt a lack of “belonging” and began to consider seeking a more stable work environment.
Return to Academia and Decision to Return
In 1975, Lin decided to return to Taiwan to work at the Academia Sinica (中研院) as an associate researcher in the Institute of Botany, and also taught at NTU’s Plant Pathology Department.
During his two years at Academia Sinica, Taiwan was still in a “hardship phase” — research funding was extremely limited, only enough to hire night-school university students with no research experience. Equipment had to be ordered from the U.S., and the approval-to-import process took two to three months, severely slowing research progress.
Despite wanting to focus on research, Lin faced numerous difficulties. To keep up with the rapidly developing biotech field, he continued to maintain connections with U.S. research institutions, using summer breaks to conduct short-term research in the United States.
After two years at Academia Sinica, Lin decided to return to the United States to expand his career.
The Turning Point: Amgen
In 1977, Lin returned to the U.S. and first worked at Louisiana State University, conducting nucleic acid biochemistry research on transfer RNA (tRNA) sequences. That year, biotech research achieved a major breakthrough: the chemical method to identify DNA sequences was invented, simplifying DNA molecular structure analysis. Lin found this discovery very interesting and began reading about genetic engineering.
In 1979, after two years at LSU, Lin transferred to the Medical University of South Carolina, conducting genetic engineering technology research.
By 1981, Lin had turned 40 — reaching the Confucian milestone of “四十而不惑” (at forty, I had no doubts). Ten years had passed since he earned his Ph.D. In those ten years, he had crossed the Pacific repeatedly, working at five different research institutions. He described his journey as “寄人籬下、大智若愚” (living under others’ roofs, appearing foolish but actually wise). However, Lin responded with gratitude: “Don’t say that — I learned a lot of new things during that time.” He believed that ten years of research across five institutions had solidly built his research foundation.
In August 1981, Lin saw an advertisement in Science magazine for a research position at Amgen (安進公司), a small biotech company newly established in Thousand Oaks, California. The ad was simple — it only mentioned needing a researcher, without even specifying what kind. At the time, Amgen was a little-known company, and few would have been interested. But something drove Lin to submit his resume. He flew from South Carolina on the East Coast to Thousand Oaks on the West Coast for an interview.
Lin joined Amgen on August 6, 1981, as the company’s seventh scientist. Amgen, founded less than a year earlier, had only about a dozen employees total — from the CEO to part-time workers. When Lin first started, the company had only one building and one lab bench that could be shared by two people. He waited several months before getting his own 15-foot bench.
The EPO Discovery
From the research topics Amgen had prepared, Lin chose the erythropoietin (EPO / 紅血球生成素) gene project. EPO is a hormone produced by the kidneys that stimulates bone marrow to produce red blood cells. All organs, tissues, and cells in the body depend on red blood cells to deliver oxygen. When kidney function fails, EPO secretion decreases, red blood cell production drops sharply, and the body suffers from anemia, dizziness, weakness, and pain — essentially a multi-system illness. Patients had to rely on dialysis and blood transfusions just to maintain basic life.
In 1977, scientists at the University of Chicago discovered that EPO could be purified from urine, but the quantity was extremely small — not clinically useful. Visionary business leaders began thinking about how to use academic research to develop pharmaceuticals.
At the time, several biotech companies were competing in this space: Amgen in Southern California, Genentech in Northern California, Genetics Institute and Biogen in Boston. A famous article titled “The 2 Billion Dollar Protein Sequencing Error” described the race.
Amgen obtained EPO samples from Eugene Goldwasser, the most prominent Chicago University professor in EPO research, and sent them to their consultant, Lee Hood (加州理工學院生物系主任), for amino acid sequencing. Hood, an instrument expert who had just invented a device that could sequence amino acids with very small samples, assigned his co-inventor Rodney Hewick to the analysis.
Shortly after EPO sequencing, on September 1, 1981, Rodney Hewick suddenly resigned and took the EPO sequence data as a “gift” to join Boston’s Genetics Institute as a senior protein chemist.
This began a race between Amgen (west coast) and Genetics Institute (east coast) to use genetic engineering to clone EPO. The problem was that Rodney Hewick’s partial EPO amino acid sequence data contained 3 errors. After three years of futile attempts, Genetics Institute began to suspect the data was wrong. They could no longer obtain samples from Goldwasser and had to go through Japan, finding Takaji Miyake (who had previously worked in Goldwasser’s lab) to obtain urine from a Mongolian descendant in Kyushu, Japan, who had aplastic anemia. Genetics Institute extracted EPO from the urine, re-sequenced, and finally got the correct answer — but it was too late.
Lin Fu-kun had already filed the patent application on December 13, 1983.
Epogen
The recombinant human erythropoietin project was finally approved by the FDA in 1989, with the generic name Epoetin Alfa, branded as Epogen. Since its introduction, Epogen has successfully treated millions of anemic persons with chronic renal failure worldwide.
Lin’s discovery and invention marked the beginning of the biotech revolution. His work earned him numerous awards and recognitions, including:
- 1990 Quality of Life Award
- 1995 Discoverers Award by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
- The 1994 National Medal of Technology awarded to Amgen at the White House, largely attributed to Lin’s contributions
Legacy
Lin Fu-kun’s story is one of perseverance through a decade of research “wanderings” — five institutions, two countries, and relentless dedication to a scientific question. From a little-known researcher in a lab to the inventor of a medicine that changed millions of lives, his journey embodies the immigrant scientist’s path: hard work, adaptability, and the courage to take risks.
The 2017 TAHS publication describes his story as one that “gives hope to Taiwanese Americans who are currently struggling and奔波 (hustling) in life.”
Source Notes and Confidence
- Content priority A: 2017 TAHS Publication 生技巨人林福坤的故事 (The Story of Biotech Giant Lin Fu-kun), Part 1, L1020–1404 (~380 lines), written by 楊文顯
- Content priority A: Contains detailed biographical narrative from birth through Amgen career, including the EPO discovery timeline
- Hub: |2017 TAHS Publication
- Note: The full text contains extensive biographical detail including family background, education timeline, research methodology, and the EPO competitive race narrative.