Let's talk about biotechnology and business?
Vadim Govorun: "My task is to keep the fire going"
Elena Ukusova, STRF.ruThe scientist and creator of an effective biotechnological business talks about the prospects of Russian science, the role of the individual in its salvation and shares the main secret of success – it is necessary to build a new world around yourself.
Govorun Vadim Markovich, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor, President of the Litech Company, Deputy Director of the Research Institute of Physico-Chemistry of Medicine, Head of the Laboratory of Proteomics of the IBH RAS. Graduated from the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences of the Russian State Medical University, from 1989 to 1994 he worked in Berlin. After returning to Russia, he headed the Litech research and production company and began developing reagent kits for the diagnosis of infectious diseases using polymerase chain reaction, a method that allows working with microscopic amounts of DNA. Today, Litech under his leadership is a research laboratory, a modern production base, a network of diagnostic offices and an educational center for specialists. He is married and has two daughters.
The research and production company "Litech" was founded in 1992 with the participation of the Research Institute of FHM for the production of food additives intended, in particular, for poultry farming. In 1994, with the arrival of Talker, the company changed its specialization and quickly took a leading position in the production of reagent kits for laboratory diagnostics. In 1997, the first sets for PCR diagnostics of Litech company were registered with Roszdravnadzor, and their production was separated into a separate structure. Today Litech also produces kits for enzyme immunoassay and actively introduces new methods of DNA diagnostics based on its own scientific developments. Litech is one of the most reputable companies in the Russian market of laboratory diagnostics, it supplies laboratories with modern equipment, reagents and consumables, as well as trains specialists and conducts its own scientific research. In 2008, Litech started developing a network of medical offices for receiving tests from individuals. To date, the company has four diagnostic centers in Moscow, it is planned to open branches in Novosibirsk and Kazan.
About the vocationI consciously went into science, I wanted to be a scientist.
My parents dreamed that I would become a doctor and continue the dynasty on my father's side, but I entered the Faculty of Medicine and Biology. It was a kind of compromise between the wishes of the family and my personal ambitions – I'm partly a doctor, but more of a scientist.
Today I am doing business, and I am doing it well, but the most interesting and favorite thing in my work is scientific activity, I consider it my vocation, and I regret that I do not have the opportunity to do it in full force, without being distracted by solving organizational problems.
About successSuccess is always relative and contextual, it is the ratio between the effort expended and the result obtained.
In the classical sense, success can be described as the achievement of a certain step in the social hierarchy. But being in power today is not my success scenario.
In my opinion, in the current Russian conditions, providing an interesting job and a stable salary for yourself and three hundred more people (employees of Litech and the FHM Research Institute) is a good result. I know that my company and my activities will leave a good mark on the lives of many people, and this is important to me. By Moscow standards, I'm not rich – I don't have a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, or a house on Rublevka, but I don't set myself such tasks. I am proud that I built an effective company from one amplifier, which has been living for 17 years, and saved an entire research institute from collapse, which today has become one of the best in Russia – and this is a personal success for me.
About teachersI lived in Germany for four years, and my teacher there was Wolf-Hagen Schunk, a wonderful man.
He opened the doors to classical German science for me. I also had powerful teachers in Russia, but there were also people who mostly showed me a negative example, demonstrating what should never be done. These are also, by the way, very important lessons.
About scienceScience in Soviet society was an elite occupation – although the salaries of scientists were small, this work was considered prestigious.
The attitude of the authorities to the researchers was completely different. Today, science is far from the main priority of the state, and I do not know if this will be corrected. What I am doing is now needed by me and the people around me, but globally it is not in demand by the state, and this makes me look at things quite darkly. If the situation does not change in the near future, we are waiting for a total collapse – the only question is how soon it will come. I teach at Phys Tech and at my native medical and biological faculty of RSMU, I communicate a lot with young people, and there are many young employees in my own team. I see a lot of smart and promising people in the new generation, but their pragmatism and a sense of the causelessness of what is happening to them will most likely "wash" them out of science. If nothing changes, they will either leave or go to other fields, as almost all good specialists from my generation have done. Only a few of my peers remained in the profession. Science today is becoming the lot of the elect, in the current conditions it can only be engaged in by those for whom it is a real vocation.
About successionI am rather pessimistic about the current situation in Russian science, and therefore formulate my task as "maintaining the fire".
Continuity is more important in science than anywhere else: it will be very difficult to restore the ruins and eliminate the colossal backlog later. At the institute, I once made a wall newspaper about Nobel laureates, and in the process of this work I learned that Nobel laureates are, as a rule, students of other Nobel laureates. In some particularly outstanding laboratories, even tailcoats are hanging. Even very smart people who don't have good teachers will remain savages. Evolutionism is important in all fields, but in science it acquires global significance – unfortunately, few people understand this now.
About goalsMy attitude to life at the moment is darkly objective.
I don't accept what is. I'm trying to change something around me. My credo, as I formulate it, is to prevent the degradation of the country, which is proceeding at a monstrous pace, to the best of my abilities. To be honest, I don't know how to live properly. I can't go with the flow, banging my head into a concrete wall is getting harder. The only recipe I see is to build your own world around yourself.
There is such a law in chemistry: the activity of a substance decreases in proportion to its dilution – if you dilute it too much, it will lose its properties in principle. In tsarist Russia, the aristocracy made up no more than 1.5 percent of the entire society, and now the intelligentsia is probably even less. A little more, and we will dissolve, and then, no matter how many bubbles you let, you won't stir up the swamp. It is always difficult for intelligent people to unite, because they are more complicated and do not stick together in a crowd. Therefore, the only possible way to save the country is for everyone to build, raise something of their own – reasonable and correct. If there are ten thousand people who can build something, and each of them will involve at least three hundred people in this work, this is already a noticeable percentage nationwide. I have succeeded, someone else will succeed, and in general it will be a movement in the right direction.
About new technologiesThe more a society lags behind in development – culturally, socially, economically, educationally – the less likely it is to introduce something new in it.
Winston Churchill said that Russians like to jump over the abyss in two jumps – this is very subtly noticed. Many things in Russia are interpreted monosyllabically and primitively, and I don't think that our society is ready for real innovations now – genetic certification, personalized medicine. All these are very complex and complex things, and in our conditions, a vanishingly small number of people still need it. But these people still exist, and we are gradually getting orders, and I believe in the need and importance of developing these technologies.
A new direction of our business is paternity identification analyses. The technologies are essentially the same as in genetic certification, but the topic in Russian society is currently more in demand. The sexual revolution is over, but fornication remains.
About Personalized MedicineThe introduction of personalized medicine, or rather personalized prevention, is one of my main goals.
We are already working on this, and we are making progress, albeit modest so far. The main causes of mortality in Russia are cardiovascular diseases and oncology. The propensity to these diseases can be detected by genetic analysis, and the risk of their development can be reduced by adjusting your lifestyle and your habits. Most of the problems in people manifest themselves after 40 years. Knowing certain things about your health, you can delay the onset of diseases or minimize their consequences. I believe that a person should own the situation and, using additional information, prolong his life, save himself for his loved ones and for society. Personally, I am very calm about life and the possibility of leaving it, because I am intimately familiar with Indian spiritual practices and Indian philosophy, according to which the body is just an outer shell, one of many possible. But I feel my responsibility to my loved ones, to my family, and therefore I take my health seriously.
About childrenI have two daughters.
The eldest is eighteen, she is a musician, a very creative person, lives in Paris, rarely comes to Moscow. The youngest is nine. I am happy to study with her, we have conversations with her on various topics, but I understand well that it is impossible to explain anything to children with words – only by my own example. I am a liberal father, and I would not impose any path on any of the children. But I feel very acutely the imperfection of the world, maybe even more than it is in reality, and therefore I want my daughters to be more harmonious people. To make life itself bring them joy, and not the daily salvation of the world – this is very important, especially for a woman.
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25.09.2009