Joint effort crucial for TCM progress

Joint effort crucial for TCM progress

Besides safety, efficiency and quality, collaboration is vital for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to claim a share of the global market and to contribute more to the health of human beings, top scientists and government officials said at a biology and medicine forum in Shanghai.

"The study of Chinese medicine could be a new paradigm for the development of future medicine and facilitate the current mainstream approach in drug discovery," said Cheng Yungchi, professor of Yale University School of Medicine.

An internationally famous leader in the fields of cancer and viral pharmacology, Cheng recently developed an interest in the use of TCM for the treatment of cancer. Currently, five chemical entities that were discovered in his laboratory are under clinical trials for the treatment of cancer, Hepatitis B virus and human immunodeficiency virus.

He said that the world was seeking multiple chemicals targeting multiple sites. Chinese herbal medicine, which falls into this category and has been proved efficient for hundreds of years, could be useful in fulfilling unmet needs of future medicine.

According to Chen Zhu, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, US$16 billion worth of medicine made of natural materials was sold last year and the volume is increasing at an annual growth rate of 10 per cent a year.

"Global demand is also providing enormous opportunities for TCM," he said to the more than 600 scientists, investors and entrepreneurs attending the three-day conference which started yesterday.

But to really globalize Chinese medicine and promote TCM study, scientists should work together to demonstrate the clinical efficacy of TCM based on evidence, Cheng said.

It is important to make consistent preparations with respect to clinical efficacy using objective quality control methodology, he said.

Equally critical is to transfer complex and unfriendly formulas to those that were simple and friendly.

"Given recent advances in our knowledge about human diseases and physiology as well as the development of modern technology and information, it is expected that all those requirements can be met," he said.

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miraculous hands

Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2005 7:05 pm