National geographic: important advances have been made in the development of innovative anti-cancer Chinese medicines, which will play an important role in the future of medicine

The 2018-12-24 hit the net

American national geographic magazine on December 14, early released in statement on its web site titled "in the long run, ignored by western scientific medicine: being born sophisticated treatment of traditional Chinese medicine" special report, in pharmacology at Yale university professors lifelong professor yung-chi cheng leadership team PHY906 platform drugs from traditional Chinese herbal medicine preparation to treat cancer (YIV - 906) as an example, points out that the traditional Chinese medicine will play an important role in the future medicine. Yiv-906 (PHY906) was developed by yiv-906 yiv-906 (PHY906), a biological startup company incubated on the entrepreneurial platform of Yale university. Yiv-906 has been approved IND by FDA of the United States, and is about to enter the international multi-center phase II human clinical trial of liver cancer. The article, which will be translated into more than 20 languages and published globally in the January 2019 issue of national geographic, explores future opportunities in TCM in medicine.

According to the article, the possibility of using traditional Chinese medicine to treat diseases is becoming more and more popular among American healthcare consumers. When western medicine cannot solve the problem, American consumers turn to traditional Chinese medicine for possible solutions. More and more americans accept traditional Chinese medicine, not only acupuncture, cupping and other factors are included in part of the insurance plan of the United States, due to the convenience of online shopping and other factors, the sales of Chinese herbal medicine in the United States market shows a significant growth trend, in 2017, the sales of American herbal medicine reached 8 billion dollars, an increase of 68% compared with 2008.

However, the western world has never stopped the fierce debate on whether traditional Chinese medicine is a pseudoscience, and many doctors also think that traditional Chinese medicine is a "pseudoscience". "People only see what they want to see," national geographic quoted Paul Unschuld, an authority on the history of Chinese medicine, as saying. Such criticism is very impersonal. "Paul Unschuld has collected and translated hundreds of ancient Chinese medical literature and is working with a sino-german start-up company to study ways to treat diseases with traditional Chinese medicine, including epilepsy.

Zheng yongqi, professor of pharmacology at Yale university, said: "the development of modern medicine cannot meet the needs of the prevention and treatment of complex diseases by using reductionism. A new holistic approach should be considered. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), developed from empirical medicine, plays an important role in the treatment and health care of orientals with this idea. But how to extract the essence and discard the dross from the wisdom of our ancestors is the key point. You can't generalize. "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water," zheng said with a smile.

Professor zheng has so far successfully invented three drugs approved by FDA in the United States. He is one of the academic leaders who rewrite the history of small-molecule medicine in the west. At the peak of his career, he resolutely turned to the field of Chinese herbal medicine for nearly 20 years, which is incomprehensible to many people in the western pharmacology field. "I had already seen the limitations of western pharmacology. The future of medicine is medicine that combines eastern wisdom with western evidence-based science, which is a treasure to be exploited."

The treasure zheng is excavating is yiv-906, a candidate drug that yiv-906 was granted exclusive authorization by the company from Yale university. This is professor zheng's student, Dr. Shuhui liu, who has searched through the century-old books of Yale Chinese library to find the 1,800-year-old classical prescription, which is described as treating "diarrhea, abdominal pain and anal burning". Zheng's team tried to use them to treat side effects of cancer. "Many cancer patients stop chemotherapy and radiation because they can't afford the side effects." "In our study, we found that yiv-906 not only helped patients significantly reduce side effects, but also showed an unexpected anti-tumor effect of enhancing cancer treatment against a variety of cancer drugs," zheng said. So far, yiv-906 combined with chemotherapy and radiotherapy has been significantly effective in eight clinical trials of colorectal cancer, liver cancer and pancreatic cancer in the United States. These findings were published in the journal science and other authoritative academic journals.

One of the reasons why traditional Chinese medicine has been questioned in the western world is the difficulty in producing high-quality medicinal herbs. This includes a range of factors, including the composition of the soil, pesticide use, time of planting and harvesting of medicinal materials, and subspecies, that can make drugs look similar but have different activities. National geographic visited bozhou, a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) hub in the United States. Every day, 10,000 traders crowded into a dome-shaped football stadium in bozhou, a traditional Chinese medicine center, sell thousands of different products to 30,000 buyers from all over southeast Asia. In this mode, the quality control of traditional Chinese medicine is a great challenge. Take yiv-906 as an example. The mixture of scutellaria baicalensis, liquorice, peony and jujube is easy to find in the market. So what is the difference between yiv-906 and the scutellaria baicalensis soup in the market? Yiv-906 has unique characteristics in its comprehensive plant quality control, including planting base. Technicians have completed quality checks on everything from soil, water and crop rotation to microbial screening, pesticide residues and heavy metals before identifying herbs.

"Yiv-906 is no longer the baikal skullcap soup on the market, but a high-quality modern multi-component drug, and we are further using modern validation science for research. Because of its versatility, the original formula can be recombined to produce a range of modern, high-quality drugs for different functions. Zheng peikun, chief executive of yiqi, said: "unlike a single-ingredient drug, yiv-906 is made up of four herbs, which means more variables must be controlled to produce a consistent product. Over the past decade, we have successfully produced more than 90% consistency in different batches of medicinal materials, which is also our core technology. Without strict quality control, Chinese herbal medicine cannot really enter the western medical arena, which is exactly the most difficult part.

With the increasing global demand for herbal medicines, Chinese farmers have put more and more acreage into the cultivation of traditional Chinese medicines. In 2017, China's medicinal plant planting industry was worth about us $25 billion. The contradiction between increasing market share and questioning quality control is more obvious. Dr. Shaw t. Chen, a former deputy director of the FDA's center for drug evaluation and research, said: "from a traditional chemist's point of view, the complexity of plant drug ingredients is a real challenge. However, the approval of FDA in the United States is determined by clinical trial data, and has nothing to do with whether the ingredients are complex or whether they are traditional Chinese medicine. FDA has no prejudice against traditional Chinese medicine or compound medicine. How to ensure consistency and efficacy of multiple batches of drugs is critical, so it is necessary to start management from planting and harvesting.

Investors are concerned about the possibility and progress of FDA approval of Chinese herbal medicines. In fact, the us FDA has long given the green light to herbal medicines. In 2004 and 2016, the us FDA issued the "plant medicine guide" and the "revised plant medicine guide" respectively. So far, two herbal prescription drugs have been approved - a genital wart treatment made from green tea extract and a diarrhea medication made from dragon blood SAP. "With the FDA's in-depth understanding of herbal medicine, we have made a number of adjustments in the revised edition to make it more operational and reasonable," Dr. Chen, who wrote and personally participated in the review of the 2016 FDA guidelines on herbal medicine, told reporters. FDA has always focused on the safety and efficacy of clinical trial data presentation. It is not that the FDA approves fewer herbs, but that clinical trials lead to fewer drug candidates in the new drug licensing application (NDA) phase. In the past few years, the only two drugs that have entered the NDA phase have been approved by the FDA.

How to plan the development of Chinese herbal medicine and how to truly go global requires international vision and cross-cultural and cross-industry communication. The Chinese medicine globalization alliance (CGCM) initiated by professor zheng yongqi has passed its 15th year. Its members come from 161 universities, research institutions and 20 industries in the world, and it has developed into the largest non-profit, non-political and non-discriminatory Chinese medicine alliance in the world. Every summer, research institutions such as the Chinese academy of medical sciences, the Chinese academy of traditional Chinese medicine, the academia sinica, the university of Hong Kong, Yale university and other business giants such as Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company and Coca-Cola gather together to discuss TCM. "Chinese herbal medicine research and development and market value are facing unprecedented historical opportunities. Tu youyou's Nobel Prize for artemisinin is a start. It is just the tip of an iceberg in the treasure trove of traditional Chinese medicine. In the future, more traditional Chinese medicine will be recognized by the world. Our goal is to make yiv-906 the first Chinese traditional multi-component plant medicine to be approved internationally. "Said zheng peikun, CEO of yiqi.