The mystic and somewhat strange reputation enjoyed by traditional Chinese medicine can be attributed mainly to its unique content: a soup made of flowers, leaves or roots which looks turbid and tastes bitter.
Chinese scientists have initiated a large-scale research program using the latest genetic technology findings to decode the mysteries of the above-mentioned liquid.
"Flora chemical set", a research project jointly launched by the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Yunnan Kunming Botany Garden, aims to set up the country's largest database and sample depository for the natural chemical compounds of some traditional Chinese medicines, which will also become the largest natural chemical compound database in the world.
Researchers said by the year 2005, the database will cover over 3,000 natural herbal plants and extract over 5,000 chemical compound samples with purity degrees over 90 percent.
China is rich in botanical resources, third in the world in terms of possession of advanced plants. However, even China's most authoritative pharmacopoeia ,Compendium of Materia Medica, written by the Ming Dynasty's pharmacologist Li Shizhen (1518-1593), only recorded about 1,000 plant types with medical value.
Chen Kaixian, academician of the CAS says: "it's hard to explain the treatment mechanism of traditional Chinese medicine using modern medical theories, and it is also hard to efficiently control the effective elements of these medicines. It is thus very difficult to guarantee the quality and safety of traditional herbal medicines."
"It's very helpful to specify which chemical compounds have played an important role in disease treatment through the establishment of a natural chemical compound database of traditional Chinese medicines," stressed Chen, "which will make traditional Chinese medicines as precise, easy to use and safe as western medicines.
The natural chemical compound database is only part of the "Flora chemical set" project. Chinese scientists will first focus on prescriptions of traditional Chinese medicines, then separate the compounds of the medicine, and then use nearly 1,000 tested genetic models to conduct experiments and selection, to confirm the effective compounds and their treatment mechanism.
This undertaking would be inconceivable without the support of genetic technology. Traditional Chinese medicine is generally regarded as a kind of "multi-element" and "multi-target" treatment method geared to the genetic technological research findings in various medical fields. The latest gene-tech findings indicate that most diseases are the results of multi-gene actions.
The project has extracted over 1,200 herbs and has obtained over 700 pure chemical compounds used in the treatment of some commonly found diseases such as tumors, cardiovascular disease and dementia.
The establishment of the database will strengthen China's ability to develop new drugs.
(Xinhua News Agency June 17, 2003)
