Traditional Chinese Medicine research JV sets up in the Babraham Bioincubator; first in UK
China's Ambassador to the UK Madame Fu Ying, last week opened Meditrina, the newest Bioincubator building at the Babraham Research Campus, and welcomed the first Chinese company - Guangzhou Xiangxue Pharmaceuticals - to the campus, near Cambridge.
The XiangCam TCM Research Centre is a pioneering collaboration between Chinese enterprise and academic institutions in China and the UK. It aims to illuminate the science underpinning Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) theories and practice, facilitating interaction between Eastern and Western practices, and ultimately to deliver solutions to the unmet needs of global healthcare in the 21st century.
Dr David Hardman, CEO of Babraham Biosciences Technologies (BBT) said, “Not only is Xiangxue the first overseas bioventure in our facilities, it is also the 50th biomedical company to locate to the Babraham Research Campus since the Bioincubator opened in 1999.”
This is the first Chinese Pharma investment in a TCM research organisation in the UK, fostering collaborative research across the academic and commercial divide between East and West.
XiangCam CEO Mr Wu Jun said: “TCM is very popular in China and it is important to represent it to the world. XiangCam is focusing on evaluation of efficacy of TCM, drawing on the excellent facilities provided by the Babraham Research Campus, our collaborators in China and the UK.
"XiangCam will bring together blue sky TCM collaborative research in the UK; research projects are already underway. We believe this model of inter-university collaborative research projects between China and the UK will foster future cross-border collaborations and pave the way for further Chinese Bio-enterprises to be incubated at the Babraham Research Campus.”
Cambridge University spear-headed the initiative with China's Tsinghua University.
Professor Peter McNaughton (pictured), Head of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Cambridge said, "In these days of huge international pharmaceutical companies and modern high-powered methods of drug development it is worth recalling how much we owe to compounds discovered in the natural world through folk medicine. As an example, aspirin, one of the most successful pharmaceutical compounds of all time, was discovered as a minor chemical modification of salicylic acid, isolated from willow bark, whose analgesic properties had been known by folk healers for millennia.”
“There are many other examples of successful pharmaceutical compounds which owe their origins to the natural world and to folk medicine, and it seems likely that there are many more waiting to be discovered. One major interest of this collaboration will be to understand how different components of several herbs can promote or inhibit the growth of new blood vessels, a process called angiogenesis. This knowledge may be useful in developing novel anti-cancer agents, because preventing the formation of new blood vessels provides a powerful means of inhibiting tumour growth."
Other UK partners include the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which will authenticate a selection of TCM herbs prior to chemical, pharmaceutical and toxicological analysis by teams at Brunel University, Bradford University, the London School of Pharmacy, Guy’s & St Thomas’ Hospital. In addition to elucidating the cellular and molecular mechanisms behind the actions of single TCM herbs, or formulas including several different herbs, a further outcome will be a reference library for TCM standards.
“Leads” identified through the Anglo-Chinese collaborative research projects will then undergo clinical research in China. This may also pave the way for new blends of Chinese medicine or plant extracts, as well as synthetic derivatives, yielding a new generation of safer and more efficacious TCM products.
Meditrina, named after the Roman goddess of medicine, was part-funded by a capital grant of £2m from the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) in partnership with the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) enabling the construction of this state-of-the-art £7m Bioincubator.
1st December 2007
