The Moon, the Moonshot and the Next Frontier

TANGrams Blog:

Even hard puzzles have a solution. OraSure CEO Steve Tang explores how all of the pieces at OraSure fit together to unlock endless potential.

The Moon, the Moonshot and the Next Frontier

 July 8, 2019

I was eight years old when Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong emerged out of Apollo 11 and became the first humans to step onto the moon. My mind was blown… but really, whose wasn’t? We had done it! America had won the space race only years after committing to be first on the moon.  Beyond that, Apollo opened up our minds to things once believed to be impossible.

For kids like me, the Apollo landing was fascinating because it was the stuff of science fiction come to life. What would they find on the moon? And let’s not forget how cool astronauts were (and are!) – these fearless role models ready to take historic steps for all of mankind.

On a more personal note, I had family ties to NASA. Both my Uncle Fred Dawn and my father, Walter Tang, were honored with NASA Lifetime Achievement Awards. Uncle Fred’s award recognized his invention of Beta-cloth, the miracle non-flammable fabric in space suits, and his long tenure as Chief Engineer at NASA's Johnson Space Center. My father’s award was for his DuPont inventions that ultimately became the miracle heat-reflecting tiles for the space shuttle program. These tiles prevented the shuttle from overheating upon re-entry. (With a hat tip to “Hamilton, An American Musical”… Immigrants, we get the job done!)

Although I ultimately pursued other disciplines in science, there’s never been a doubt in mind that my passion for innovation came from exposure to it while I was growing up. From hearing of my father’s work to watching stories on the evening news about further space exploration, the sky wasn’t the limit anymore in my mind.

Today I’m a businessman as much as I am a scientist. I credit the era I grew up in for putting me on a path to help change lives through life sciences. Think about HIV – at the height of the AIDS crisis it seemed that effective treatment would take nothing short of the figurative moonshot. It wasn’t going to happen overnight. But with the best minds and hearts committed to the cause, we now have testing and treatment strategies that in tandem can help the United States reach its goal of eliminating HIV/AIDS by 2030. And we won’t stop there. Suffice it to say, I feel privileged to lead a company that has a seat at this table. And my love for science is what put me there.

OraSure is recognized for making the first FDA-approved rapid tests for HIV and Hepatitis C in response to global health concerns. Yet we also find ourselves at the precipice of leading-edge medicine in the form of multiomics. To me, this is where discovery increasingly feels limitless. Twenty years ago the genome was news – big news. Today genomics-based diagnostics and treatments are making it from the lab to the bedside at speed, tangibly impacting people’s lives. And multiomics enables us to analyze multiple layers of essential information from the other “omes” – the epigenome, the transcriptome, and the proteome to name a few.

But if you want to know what really has me especially geeked up, it is the gut microbiome. These trillions of bacteria and other microorganisms aim to keep us regulated and healthy; but occasionally that goes haywire. We now understand that changes in our microbiomes are associated with GI disease, neurological disorders and even how our bodies process medicine. Ten years ago, only scientists were talking about these ideas; today learnings are coming out about the composition and function of our microbiomes on a daily basis – and everyone is talking about it, not just scientists.

I can certainly draw parallels between our solar system and our human systems. We know a lot about both of them -- yet we long to know more. So while space travel is not happening for the majority of us, we do possess the opportunity to explore ourselves—our inner space, if you will.  And whether it’s putting a man on the moon or diagnosing and curing deadly disease, scientific discovery is what makes it happen. 

No matter where you are this July, chances are at some point, after a news story, tweet or article, you will find yourself thinking about Apollo 11. And when you do, pause for a moment to think about what you can do to make sure science stays alive and well in the dreams of our youth.

Progress is here to stay, but challenges are ever present. Let’s use our enthusiasm for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing to encourage future generations to keep taking small steps that equate to giant leaps in the future.