Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) announced Wednesday that the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) has awarded CUHK grants to carry out two Chinese medicine study projects.

Harvard University Medical School, the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Institute of Chinese Medicine of CUHK and Keio University of Japan were awarded a grant of US$263,031 to establish US-China-Japan research consortium on herbal medicine as one of the projects.

The consortium aims at developing an International Center for Research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) which pools Chinese medicine experts and researchers from Hong Kong. Promising herbal medicines for untreatable diseases like cancer will be identified and then systematically procured, extracted, characterized and tested with new and advanced high-throughput screening methodologies with the technical support provided by the consortium.

Another US$2,555,940 was granted to University of Maryland, the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics of CUHK and the University of Illinois at Chicago Program for setting up the Center for Functional Bowel Disorders and Traditional Chinese Medicine.

The collaboration consortium will support a multi-disciplinary team of researchers to conduct basic science and clinical research investigating the use of CAM in the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome.

Chairman of the Management Committee of the Institute of Chinese Medicine of CUHK Leung Ping Chung said that, "The partnership and synergism with prestigious institutes will foster research in Chinese medicine.

The grants are also a recognition of CUHK's achievement in Chinese medicine research and brings it to the international arena."

The NCCAM of the US National Institute of Health (NIH) is funding partnerships between America and international research teams to create the infrastructure and scientific foundation for research on CAM. CUHK is the only institution from Hong Kong joining these partnerships at present.

(Xinhua News Agency February 5, 2004)