In drug discovery, twenty years is enough to reshape entire fields. Technologies rise and fall, and the science keeps evolving. Many scientists move with those changes. Yuyan Chen, Senior Director of Peptide R&D at BioDuro, did not.
What has kept Yuyan in the same company for nearly two decades is not ambition, but a quiet persistence. She has spent her entire career at BioDuro, growing with a field that kept changing, in a place where trust was consistently given and she was able to take on new challenges with confidence.
One night, about twenty years ago, long after the city had gone quiet, a lab at BioDuro Beijing site was still lit. A reaction was ongoing in the background, purification was still in progress, and the lyophilizer hummed in the corner. It was late, and a complex peptide project under a tight timeline was racing against its deadline.
Yuyan had just joined BioDuro after completing her PhD, and she was showing up for her first peptide synthesis project under real production pressure.
That was when she noticed her director had shown up and brought a chair into the corner of the lab. He didn’t step in to lead the work or interrupt the team. He moved between different benches in the lab, occasionally leaning back, sometimes closing his eyes for a few seconds, but never leaving.
Seeing him there, Yuyan felt a mix of surprise and relief. As a new hire under pressure, she hadn’t expected that kind of presence — and it stayed with her. “My manager was hands-on,” Yuyan says. “And he always showed up and stayed with us. That type of support means everything.”
That night, early in her first project after joining BioDuro, she understood what it means to show up. Two decades later, she is the one who pulls up a chair and stays with her teams when things are uncertain.
BioDuro is Yuyan’s first and only company since her PhD, where she has spent nearly two decades building her career. She began in small molecule synthesis, working through problems as they came, step by step, rather than following a fixed path. “From the start of my career, I didn’t plan too far ahead,” she says. “I focused on what was right in front of me and the next step.” For her, career progress came from staying close to the work and showing up when challenges arose, solving problems as they appeared rather than relying on plans that only look good on paper.
Over time, this way of working shaped her foundation in chemistry and troubleshooting. Her growth at BioDuro was not defined by a preset career plan, but developed through the work itself. Her responsibilities gradually expanded from chemist to group leader, eventually leading a group of small molecule chemists. For Yuyan, staying in one place was never about standing still. As her responsibilities deepened, so did the work around her — the team grew, and over the past year, project scale, complexity, pressure, and impact all increased significantly.
Although much of her career has been in small molecule programs, Yuyan still remembers her doctoral training in peptide chemistry. Even while focused elsewhere, she kept a sustained interest in how peptide chemistry was evolving in drug discovery.
That interest eventually found direction within BioDuro. Rather than remaining within a single discipline, she was able to carry her experience across fields, supported by an environment that encourages scientists to follow their curiosity and build new expertise over time.
Her steady, step-by-step way of working, shaped by the trust she experienced at BioDuro, was grounded in an environment where she stayed close to each problem long enough to build real depth, ultimately leading her into the peptide field she had long been drawn to.
When BioDuro began building its peptide synthesis capability, the area was still internally undefined, with no established framework for how such a platform should function in practice. What started as an interest quickly became a core responsibility for Yuyan.
The rollout of BioDuro’s first automated peptide synthesizer marked one of the earliest steps in shaping that capability. Yuyan played a key role in driving it forward — not as a simple piece of equipment, but as part of a carefully considered foundation for how peptide synthesis would eventually be organized and scaled.
In parallel, she and her team were responsible for delivering complex peptide projects, at a time when no automated synthesizer was yet in place. Work happened directly at the bench, where every step was executed manually and closely coordinated. With no dedicated purification team in place at the time, Yuyan also worked side by side with colleagues to guide purification in real time and build capability through execution.
“There’s never a perfect starting point,” she often says. “You begin, and only then do you realize what’s missing. You adjust and solve things as they come, instead of waiting for everything to be fully defined.” Her way of working is shaped by BioDuro’s culture, where science is the foundation of everything. At BioDuro, people are trusted to explore, try, fail, and learn as long as the work remains grounded in rigorous scientific execution.
After BioDuro made the decision to formally build out its peptide synthesis platform, she stepped into leading its development from the ground up. That move reflected both her hands-on approach to problem solving and years of small molecule experience built in BioDuro. Just as importantly, it was made possible by the trust she had built within BioDuro, where she had consistently been given space to take on new challenges with confidence.
The platform she helped build now supports a broad range of peptides, including linear, cyclic, labeled, macrocyclic peptides, and peptide conjugates, with steadily expanding capabilities across scale and complexity. It is supported by advanced synthesis systems and a dedicated purification team, enabling consistent delivery across a wide range of project needs.
For Yuyan, leading people is rooted in the same experience she has had throughout her career at BioDuro: being trusted and given space to grow. Over time, that experience shaped how she works with her own team — staying present when things are uncertain, so people can stay steady without feeling they are on their own.
She recalls a young chemist who came from a culture where failure was not tolerated, and where even temporary setbacks could carry consequences. As a result, the chemist developed a careful and self-contained way of working, often handling issues on her own rather than discussing them openly within the team.
In moments like this, Yuyan would first reframe how failure was seen. She made it clear that failed experiments were a normal part of scientific work and did not need to be carried alone or hidden. Instead, she encouraged open discussion, so problems could be addressed together, and the work could move forward without fear.
What makes this possible is the environment at BioDuro, where science is the starting point of everything, and its uncertainty and iterative nature shape how work is done. In this kind of work, people are not separated from the challenges they face — they stay with problems and work through them rather than around them. This is the environment in which Yuyan works and grows, and where she learned how to show up for others in the same way.
When people ask Yuyan what has kept her in the same company for nearly two decades, she does not talk about ambition. It is not a story of big turning points. For her, it has been simple: she has kept showing up.
In synthetic chemistry, a field often associated with physically demanding work, especially in large-scale reactions, and where many women eventually step away, she chose to stay. Supported by a culture of trust, she took on increasing responsibility over time, meeting each challenge quietly — learning, adapting, and continuing without stepping away when the work became difficult.
And she still shows up, in the same way.
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