TCM alliance to bring herbal remedies to market

An alliance to encourage drug innovations from herbal remedies has been established in Shanghai.

Herbal remedies are usually exclusive to hospitals because they are prescribed by experienced traditional Chinese medicine doctors.

Although TCM proves effective in clinical use, lack of scientific evidence has bottle-necked efforts to promote it.

Therefore, the Shanghai Innovative TCM Transformation Alliance was established during the 15th Shanghai International Conference on TCM and Natural Medicine.

It offers a platform to link hospitals, research institutes and pharmaceutical enterprises to promote herbal remedies to be licensed and launched for extensive market use.

Thirty top experts such as pharmaceutical chemist Chen Kaixian and TCM doctor Shi Qi, eight reputable hospitals such as Longhua Hospital and Shuguang Hospital and 10 big pharmaceutical enterprises such as Hutchison and Green Valley have joined the alliance.

Wang Yongjun, vice president of Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, compared hospitals to incubators of licensed TCM.

"There are nine hospitals afflicted to our university and they have nearly 1,600 self-developed herbal remedies which have been proved very effective in treating chronic diseases, infectious diseases and gynecological diseases," he said. "We hope to find funding and partnership via the alliance to have our remedies developed and licensed."