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Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) news, info

科技日报
今天 15:34 来自 微博 weibo.com
【清肺排毒汤临床数据分析显示:临床疗效明显】2月17日,国务院联防联控机制召开新闻发布会,介绍医疗救治工作进展情况。国家中医药管理局科技司司长李昱表示,相关部门进行了清肺排毒汤的临床疗效和数据分析,在2百余项临床试验有效的数据支持下,向全国推荐使用清肺排毒汤汤。对七百余例的病例分析显示,51例症状消失。服用一天之后,51.8%患者体温恢复正常,服用6天后,90%以上的患者恢复正常。对于乏力、咽痛等均有明显疗效。所有的轻型、普通型患者没有一例转为重型,目前,共有46例治愈出院。(科技日报记者 张佳星)
Google translate:

Science and Technology Daily
Today at 15:34 from Weibo

[Clinical data analysis of Qingfei Paidu Decoction shows significant clinical effect]
On February 17, Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council held a press conference to introduce the progress of medical treatment. Li Yu, director of the Department of Science and Technology of the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said that relevant departments have conducted clinical efficacy and data analysis of Qingfei Paidu Decoction, and recommended the use of Qingfei Paidu Decoction to the whole country with the support of more than 200 clinical trials. Analysis of more than 700 cases showed that 51 cases symptom had disappeared. After taking it for one day, 51.8% of patients returned to normal temperature, and after taking it for 6 days, more than 90% of patients returned to normal. It has obvious effects on cases of fatigue and sore throat. None of the light and normal patients has been become severe case. Currently, 46 patients have been cured and discharged. (Science and Technology Daily reporter Zhang Jiaxing)

TCM shows good effects in COVID-19 treatment: official
Source: Xinhua| 2020-02-17 17:25:27|Editor: huaxia

BEIJING, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been proven effective in curing patients of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19), a Chinese health official said Monday.

For example, a TCM decoction named "Qingfei Paidutang" has been used in treating 701 confirmed cases in 10 provinces, of which 130 have been cured and discharged, said Li Yu, an official with the National Administration of TCM.

Symptoms have disappeared in 51 cases and improved in 268, with another 212 remaining in stable condition, said Li, adding that the decoction was recommended to medical institutions nationwide on Feb. 6 after data analysis on 214 cases.

Li also shared the analysis and statistics cases with detailed clinical records, as 94.6 percent of the 112 patients restored to normal body temperature, and 80.6 percent of 214 patients stopped coughing after using the decoction for six days.

The data showed the decoction's good clinical effect and treatment prospect on COVID-19, said Li.
 
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Majority of novel coronavirus patients nationwide receive TCM treatments
By Wang Xiaoyu | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2020-02-17 17:31

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[Photo/IC]

More than 85 percent of novel coronavirus pneumonia patients nationwide have received Traditional Chinese Medicine as a means of treatment, the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine said on Monday.

TCM has been applied to 60,107 infected patients, or 85.2 percent, of total infections, as of recently, according to Jiang Jian, chief of the top TCM authority's medical administration and supervision department. As of late Sunday, the number of confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland rose to 70,548.

Outside Hubei province, about 87 percent of patients taking TCM medications have either recovered and been discharged from hospitals or exhibited improvements in their condition, Jiang said.

TCM has appeared to play a relatively smaller role in Hubei, as Wang Hesheng, head of Hubei Provincial Health Commission, said on Saturday that more than half of confirmed cases in the region have used TCM remedies.

Jiang added that over 3,100 medical workers specializing in TCM from 28 provincial-level regions across China have arrived in Hubei to boost the regions' medical care capabilities, and four batches of national-level TCM teams comprising 588 people are now stationed in four medical institutions in Hubei, including the newly-built Leishenshan hospital and a makeshift treatment center in Wuhan's Jiangxia district.

TCM scientists also are racing to search for effective TCM drugs and prepare for relevant clinical trials, according to Li Yu, chief of the administration's Science and Technology Department.

One herbal concoction, known as Qingfei Paidu Soup, which mixes ephedra and licorice root among other ingredients, has emerged as a promising candidate, Li said.

"We are now closely observing 701 patients that are taking the concoction in 10 provincial-level regions," Li said. "Among them, 130 cases have been discharged from hospital, symptoms of 51 cases have abated, and 268 cases have shown improvements."

"Available data has pointed to bright prospects in deploying TCM to treat novel coronavirus pneumonia and boosted our confidence in winning the battle against the disease," he added.
 
Western medicine, TCM scramble to offer therapies against COVID-19
By GT staff reporters Source:Global Times Published: 2020/2/18 1:34:50

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Medical workers check patients' information at Jiangxia temporary hospital in Wuhan, capital city of central China's Hubei Province, Feb. 14, 2020. The hospital is the first temporary hospital that mainly adopt Traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) to treat the patients. Photo: Xinhua

As local governments are racing against the clock to quarantine and guide people to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, Western medicine therapy and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) are scrambling to find the best treatment for patients in the outbreak that has claimed at least 1,770 lives so far.

To reduce the death toll and increase the curative rate, hospitals across China and medical teams in Hubei Province, the epicenter of the outbreak, have adopted different therapies to treat patients, which recalled a debate over the effectiveness of TCM.

TCM universities and hospitals across the country have sent 2,220 medical workers to Hubei to help combat the epidemic, Wang Hesheng, deputy head of the National Health Commission, said at a press conference on Saturday.

TCM has been applied in the treatment of more than half of the confirmed patients of COVID-19 in Hubei, Wang said, noting that the combination of TCM and Western medicine is an important feature of the fight against the novel coronavirus epidemic.

However, skeptics believe that TCM treatment against the virus has no scientific evidence and uses only a combination of medical herbs. A medicine has to pass at least three phases of clinical trials before it can be applied, Tao Lina, a former fellow with the Shanghai Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Global Times on Monday.

It's a strange logic to say TCM can prevent and cure the coronavirus since TCM does not have the concept of microorganisms, Tao said. "It's like a mechanic who doesn't know the mechanics of a television but claims he can fix a broken TV. Maybe it's done by coincidence."

However, two patients from East China's Jiangxi Province who only received TCM treatment have been discharged from hospital on Sunday. For patients in critical conditions, TCM can improve their symptoms, shorten treatment duration, reduce the amount of hormones and reduce complications, reports said.

"It is undeniable that TCM can effectively relieve symptoms like cough and fever. In addition, it is not impossible that TCM could be proven effective to kill the virus in the future, like Tu Youyou discovering artemisinin," Cui Yongqiang, a chief physician at a hospital affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times on Monday.

With the right methods, and the help of "a 1,700-year-old book" on TCM, Chinese pharmacologist Tu Youyou received the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering an active component, artemisinin, which is effective against malaria, saving the lives of millions and halving the mortality rate of malaria over the past 15 years.

Cui believes that when there are no special drugs that can directly kill the novel coronavirus, TCM and Western medicine are doing the same thing to alleviate the symptoms and strengthen the body's immunity.

But according to Peng Zhiyong, director of the intensive care unit of the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University in Wuhan, doctors use more Western medicine in clinical treatment than TCM. "TCM does well in relieving symptoms but is not so effective on critical patients," Peng said.

TCM can achieve apparent effects on the patient at the early stage of the disease. A type of herbal medicine soup has proved effective for 90 percent of the COVID-19 patients, as revealed by clinical observation, the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine announced.

Hu Bijie, director of the infection department in a hospital in Shanghai, told the Global Times that "cases have shown the combination of TCM and Western medicine has better results in treating the coronavirus infection than using either alone."

Hu holds very high expectations for the development of a "magic" Western drug, similar to Oseltamivir, a very effective antiviral medicine used to prevent and treat flu. "But who knows when this magic drug can be developed?" Hu said.

The combination of TCM and Western medicine has been applied in treating patients at designated hospitals in Hubei Province and has proved effective in treating mild cases of the coronavirus and shortening the treatment period for critical patients. Over 75 percent of the confirmed patients in Hubei used TCM, reports said.

Clinical doctors have revealed that the coronavirus could damage multiple organs. Cui noted that TCM would do better under these circumstances as it aims at regulating people's overall physical state rather than targeting one single symptom.

"The controversy over TCM has lasted for years, but we can see that its effectiveness is gradually being accepted by the international community. Now, many foreigners are interested in TCM and come to China to learn TCM," Cui said.

The usage of TCM should not be interpreted as a denial of other measures for COVID-19, he noted.

TCM has a wide acceptance among older generations in China. People rushed to purchase Shuanghuanglian syrup, containing three herbal ingredients, when experts declared it was effective against the coronavirus, but later some medical professionals revealed that its anti-viral function had yet to be further proved.
 
Jiangxi: Traditional Chinese Medicine Treatment Applied in Fighting COVID-19
Source: Xinhua| 2020-02-19 10:06:56|Editor: huaxia

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A patient receives a foot bath treatment in a bucket of decoction in an isolation ward of the affiliated hospital of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Feb. 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Hu Chenhuan)

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which has been proven effective for COVID-19 patients, is used in treating confirmed cases in China.

JIANGXI, Feb. 19 (Xinhua) -- A TCM decoction named "Qingfei Paidutang" has been used in treating 701 confirmed cases in 10 provinces, of which 130 have been cleared for discharge, an official with the National Administration of TCM said Monday.

The decoction has been recommended to medical institutions nationwide on Feb. 6 after data analysis on 214 cases.

During the fight against the novel coronavirus, the affiliated hospital of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine steps up efforts to push forward the TCM treatment for the patients infected with the novel coronavirus.

"Western medicine offers important life-supporting measures such as respiratory and circulatory assistance, while TCM focuses on improving patients' physical conditions and immune function. They complement each other," said Zhang Boli, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

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A patient receives thermal treatment in an isolation ward of the affiliated hospital of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Feb. 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Hu Chenhuan)

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A medical staff encourages a patient in an isolation ward of the affiliated hospital of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Feb. 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Hu Chenhuan)

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A medical staff records treatment and nursing details in an isolation ward of the affiliated hospital of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Feb. 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Hu Chenhuan)

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A patient receives acupuncture treatment in a ward of the affiliated hospital of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Feb. 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Hu Chenhuan)

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A medical staff disinfects a corridor in a ward of the affiliated hospital of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Feb. 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Hu Chenhuan)

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A medical staff apply thermal treatment on a patient in an isolation ward of the affiliated hospital of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Feb. 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Hu Chenhuan)

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A medical staff checks a patient's condition in an isolation ward of the affiliated hospital of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Feb. 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Hu Chenhuan)

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Medical staff prepare to enter an isolation ward of the affiliated hospital of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Feb. 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Hu Chenhuan)

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A medical staff leads patients to do exercise in a ward of the affiliated hospital of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Feb. 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Hu Chenhuan)
 
Expert highlights traditional Chinese medicine in fight against novel coronavirus
Source: Xinhua| 2020-02-19 00:16:03|Editor: huaxia

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Renowned Chinese respiratory specialist Zhong Nanshan speaks at a press conference in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Feb. 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Deng Hua)

GUANGZHOU, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- Renowned Chinese respiratory specialist Zhong Nanshan on Tuesday highlighted the studies on traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) in the fight against novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Speaking at a press conference held in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Zhong said the herbal prescription called "Pneumonia No. 1" applied on Jan. 23 had proved effective in the treatment of COVID-19 patients in the province.

According to Zhong, researchers are testing on the already widely used TCM drugs, such as Liushenwan and Lianhuaqingwen, to find out whether they can kill the virus, reduce the virus' access to the cell and lower the incidence of a cytokine storm, meaning the massive inflammation which may lead to death.

These tests may provide some evidence for the application of the TCM during the early and middle stages of the COVID-19, he said.

Yang Zifeng, a professor with the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Health and a member of Zhong's team, said through in vitro experiments on 54 existing TCM drugs available on market, researchers have found five that can effectively inhibit the novel coronavirus infection.

"Indicating the anti-viral and anti-inflammation effects of the drugs made from TCM, the experiments give some hope for the treatment of the novel coronavirus. But more clinical experiments are needed to test their clinical effect," he said.

TCM has never missed a single fight against epidemics throughout Chinese history. TCM classics have provided sufficient evidence of how TCM cured epidemic diseases such as smallpox over the past several thousand years.

A specific chapter detailing TCM treatment during a patient's medical observation, clinical treatment and recovery has been included in the latest version of the COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment scheme released by the National Health Commission.
 
23 recover from virus after TCM treatments
By Wu Yong in Wuhan | China Daily | Updated: 2020-02-27 09:10

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A pharmacist of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) arranges doses of TCM decoctions to help combat the novel coronavirus epidemic at Xiaogan Chinese Medical Hospital in Xiaogan city, central China's Hubei province, Feb 25, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]

The first group of 23 patients have recovered from novel coronavirus pneumonia and were released on Wednesday morning from Jiangxia makeshift hospital, the first medical institution entirely managed by traditional Chinese medicine doctors.

Since it began operation on Feb 14, the makeshift hospital has received 398 patients, with none degrading to serious condition, according to the hospital.

"The patients' feedback has been very positive in our hospital. I believe Chinese wisdom will play a greater role and help us achieve final victory," said Liu Qingquan, president of the hospital and head of the Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine affiliated with Capital Medical University.

Hu Yuzhen, 52, one of the recovered patients, was very resistant to TCM treatment at first and strongly requested to be transferred to another hospital.

"I feel a little embarrassed now, since I knew nothing about TCM before," Hu said. "After four days' treatment, I recovered quickly and could even do some exercise. I've asked doctors to give me some TCM advice after returning home. It is really amazing."

Hu's attending physician, Zhu Ying, vice-president of the First Hospital of Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, said she managed to relieve the patients' anxieties through massage and let them do baduanjin, a traditional Chinese fitness activity.

"All these TCM methods largely improve patients' immunity system and help defeat the virus. We are confident that all patients will be cured in the next month," said Zhu, whose team has cured 14 patients so far.

Official data showed that as of Feb 21, 3,200 trained TCM medical workers have participated in treating virus patients in Hubei, and TCM has been used to treat 60,107 infected patients, or 85.2 percent of the total infections nationwide, as of Feb 17.

Liu Jianyu and Han Yingchun contributed to this story.

wuyong@chinadaily.com.cn

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TCM widely used in COVID-19 patient treatment, yielding good results
Source: Xinhua| 2020-02-29 16:54:42|Editor: huaxia

BEIJING, Feb. 29 (Xinhua) -- Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been widely used to treat COVID-19 patients, yielding good outcomes, said a medical expert Saturday.

With TCM treatment, patients with mild symptoms have seen their fever or cough alleviated, Wang Rongbing, director physician with Beijing Ditan Hospital, said at a press conference.

For severely ill patients, TCM helped relieve symptoms and restore blood oxygen saturation, preventing the patients' conditions from developing into critically ill cases, Wang said.

She also noted the effectiveness of Qingfei Paidu Soup, a herbal concoction that mixes ephedra and licorice root among other ingredients, in the treatment of COVID-19 patients with symptoms ranging from mild to critical.

Qingfei Paidu Soup has been used in 66 designated hospitals in 10 provincial-level regions, Wang said, adding that of the 1,183 patients under medical observation, 640 have been discharged from hospital and 457 have seen their symptoms eased.
 
Ancient Chinese medicine unlocks new possibilities for cancer treatment | YaleNews
By Brita Belli
march 13, 2020

ancient-meds-20-27_a7300850-cc.jpg
Yung-Chi Cheng, Henry Bronson Professor of Pharmacology, a leader in drug development for hepatitis B, cancer, and HIV, is developing the first botanical drug to treat cancer. (Photo credit: Andrew Hurley)

More than 20 years ago, Yale pharmacology professor Yung-Chi Cheng, a leader in drug development for hepatitis B, cancer, and HIV, had a radical idea: What if he could unlock the therapeutic potential of ancient Chinese medicines for treating cancer? What if he could design botanical drugs that would make traditional cancer treatments work better?

No one had done it before. The Food and Drug Administration didn’t even have a process in place for approving multi-ingredient botanical drugs, and wouldn’t until 2004, when the agency released botanical drug-specific guidelines.

Fellow researchers and drug development experts advised him to change course. Developing botanical drugs was too complicated, they said, too risky.

But the idea had taken hold, and Cheng, the Henry Bronson Professor of Pharmacology at Yale School of Medicine, was not going to let it go.

“Chinese medicine works by taking advantage of multiple chemicals, but also the capability of different organs in metabolizing these chemicals,” he said, surrounded by careening stacks of paper in his office at Yale’s Sterling Hall of Medicine. “It’s a totally new paradigm. I’ve been met with a lot of suspicion, but I think the results will speak for themselves.”

Yiviva, Cheng’s biotech company, which is developing YIV-906. Combining Chinese and Spanish words, Yiviva translates as “long live medicine.” It’s a fitting slogan for a company that has resurrected an 1,800-year-old formula for stomach ailments to help fight cancer.

Old discoveries made new
In 1997, as Liu was finishing her postdoctoral work, Cheng mentioned his interest in Chinese medicine. “He said he thought it could be the future of medicine — especially in cancer,” Liu said. She was a chemist with no background in Chinese medicine, but “he thought we could work together,” she said. “My chemistry could help with quality control.”

ancient-meds-28-14_a7300879-cc.jpg
Left to right: Yung-Chi Cheng, Henry Bronson Professor of Pharmacology; Shwu-Huey Liu, cofounder and Chief Scientific Officer of Yiviva, who began working with Cheng as a postdoc in 2013; and Wing Lam, associate research scientist, who leads Yiviva’s preclinical work. (Photo credit: Andrew Hurley)

Liu connected with a librarian at Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library, and was led to a tucked-away room on the third floor where few patrons ever set foot. She spent hours leafing through Sterling’s collection of ancient Chinese texts, tracing the properties of Chinese herbs. Cheng had told her to look for herbs that were still in use, were not too rare, and had four or fewer elements.

Liu returned with about 20 formulations. One of them, an 1,800-year-old treatment for stomach ailments, was called Huang Qin Tang. It combined licorice, dates, peonies, and skullcap, and was traditionally prepared as a tea. After lab testing, the Cheng team found that Huang Qin Tang had a high inhibitory property against the debilitating side effects of a chemotherapy drug called CPT-11 (later approved as irinotecan), including diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. Cheng and team developed a drug based on the formula and tested it on one thousand mice.

Not only did their drug, YIV-906, reduce the toxic GI side effects of the chemo drug, but it also enhanced irinotecan’s anti-tumor activity — a major discovery that revealed YIV-906’s powerful therapeutic potential.

“It was a surprise to us to see not only a reduction in the GI side effects of chemo but also an increase in the chemo action against tumors,” Cheng said.

The rise of “WE” medicine
What followed were years of additional testing of the drug’s effectiveness for a range of cancers — including liver, pancreatic, and colorectal — in multiple human studies involving over 200 patients. The positive effects were replicated again and again. YIV-906 not only diminished the side effects of chemo drugs and radiation therapy, but also led to a stabilization of cancer, faster recovery, and longer survival rates.

In 2019, Cheng and his research partners ran a study with Yale immunobiology professor Lieping Chen to test YIV-906’s effectiveness with Chen’s immunotherapy drug anti-PD1, and found that YIV-906 enhanced the immunotherapy drug’s anti-tumor property. The combination of the drugs not only eradicated all tumors in mice, but when new tumors were implanted, the tumors did not grow. This suggested that YIV-906 with anti-PD1 “created a tumor-specific vaccine-like effect,” they wrote in their study.

ancient-meds-34-05_a7300902-cc.jpg
The botanical drug YIV-906 (center) is developed from an 1800-year-old Chinese formula and relies on four naturally derived ingredients: licorice, skullcap, peony, and dates. (Photo credit: Andrew Hurley)

They called the new approach “WE” medicine, a melding of Western medicine — focused on microscopic and single-disease targets — and Eastern medicine, exemplified by traditional Chinese therapies.

A whole-system approach is needed to combat a complex adversary like cancer, Cheng said.

“The reason this drug works is because it has multiple chemicals which can work on multiple sites to alter the whole system of homeostasis,” he said. “It triggers both innate immunity as well as adaptive immunity within the cancer micro-environment.”

All they need now are larger data sets. When the results of the international trial are available about three years from now, YIV-906 may find itself next in a long line of breakthrough drugs developed from natural products, a lineage that includes aspirin (from willow bark); Taxol (from pacific yew tree bark); Tamiflu (from star anise); and Artemisinin, a malaria treatment developed from the Chinese herb Artemisia annua, the discovery of which led to a Nobel Prize for chemist Youyou Tu.

It has been a long journey, but if Cheng and team are successful, it could yield a new approach for treating not only cancer, but for the prevention and treatment of age-related diseases and pulmonary diseases using adapted traditional Chinese medicine, Cheng said.

Said Soderstrom of Yale’s Office of Cooperative Research, “This is an untapped potential people hadn’t thought much about before.”

Liu, who has stuck with Cheng since she first began studying in his lab over two decades ago, through multiple startups and lean times, said his belief in the massive potential of botanical drugs has sustained her.

“Dr. Cheng said, ‘If we get the first Chinese medicine approved as an FDA prescription drug, it will change human history,’” Liu said. “And I believe him.”
 
Ancient Chinese medicine unlocks new possibilities for cancer treatment | YaleNews
By Brita Belli
march 13, 2020

ancient-meds-20-27_a7300850-cc.jpg
Yung-Chi Cheng, Henry Bronson Professor of Pharmacology, a leader in drug development for hepatitis B, cancer, and HIV, is developing the first botanical drug to treat cancer. (Photo credit: Andrew Hurley)

More than 20 years ago, Yale pharmacology professor Yung-Chi Cheng, a leader in drug development for hepatitis B, cancer, and HIV, had a radical idea: What if he could unlock the therapeutic potential of ancient Chinese medicines for treating cancer? What if he could design botanical drugs that would make traditional cancer treatments work better?

No one had done it before. The Food and Drug Administration didn’t even have a process in place for approving multi-ingredient botanical drugs, and wouldn’t until 2004, when the agency released botanical drug-specific guidelines.

Fellow researchers and drug development experts advised him to change course. Developing botanical drugs was too complicated, they said, too risky.

But the idea had taken hold, and Cheng, the Henry Bronson Professor of Pharmacology at Yale School of Medicine, was not going to let it go.

“Chinese medicine works by taking advantage of multiple chemicals, but also the capability of different organs in metabolizing these chemicals,” he said, surrounded by careening stacks of paper in his office at Yale’s Sterling Hall of Medicine. “It’s a totally new paradigm. I’ve been met with a lot of suspicion, but I think the results will speak for themselves.”

Yiviva, Cheng’s biotech company, which is developing YIV-906. Combining Chinese and Spanish words, Yiviva translates as “long live medicine.” It’s a fitting slogan for a company that has resurrected an 1,800-year-old formula for stomach ailments to help fight cancer.

Old discoveries made new
In 1997, as Liu was finishing her postdoctoral work, Cheng mentioned his interest in Chinese medicine. “He said he thought it could be the future of medicine — especially in cancer,” Liu said. She was a chemist with no background in Chinese medicine, but “he thought we could work together,” she said. “My chemistry could help with quality control.”

ancient-meds-28-14_a7300879-cc.jpg
Left to right: Yung-Chi Cheng, Henry Bronson Professor of Pharmacology; Shwu-Huey Liu, cofounder and Chief Scientific Officer of Yiviva, who began working with Cheng as a postdoc in 2013; and Wing Lam, associate research scientist, who leads Yiviva’s preclinical work. (Photo credit: Andrew Hurley)

Liu connected with a librarian at Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library, and was led to a tucked-away room on the third floor where few patrons ever set foot. She spent hours leafing through Sterling’s collection of ancient Chinese texts, tracing the properties of Chinese herbs. Cheng had told her to look for herbs that were still in use, were not too rare, and had four or fewer elements.

Liu returned with about 20 formulations. One of them, an 1,800-year-old treatment for stomach ailments, was called Huang Qin Tang. It combined licorice, dates, peonies, and skullcap, and was traditionally prepared as a tea. After lab testing, the Cheng team found that Huang Qin Tang had a high inhibitory property against the debilitating side effects of a chemotherapy drug called CPT-11 (later approved as irinotecan), including diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. Cheng and team developed a drug based on the formula and tested it on one thousand mice.

Not only did their drug, YIV-906, reduce the toxic GI side effects of the chemo drug, but it also enhanced irinotecan’s anti-tumor activity — a major discovery that revealed YIV-906’s powerful therapeutic potential.

“It was a surprise to us to see not only a reduction in the GI side effects of chemo but also an increase in the chemo action against tumors,” Cheng said.

The rise of “WE” medicine
What followed were years of additional testing of the drug’s effectiveness for a range of cancers — including liver, pancreatic, and colorectal — in multiple human studies involving over 200 patients. The positive effects were replicated again and again. YIV-906 not only diminished the side effects of chemo drugs and radiation therapy, but also led to a stabilization of cancer, faster recovery, and longer survival rates.

In 2019, Cheng and his research partners ran a study with Yale immunobiology professor Lieping Chen to test YIV-906’s effectiveness with Chen’s immunotherapy drug anti-PD1, and found that YIV-906 enhanced the immunotherapy drug’s anti-tumor property. The combination of the drugs not only eradicated all tumors in mice, but when new tumors were implanted, the tumors did not grow. This suggested that YIV-906 with anti-PD1 “created a tumor-specific vaccine-like effect,” they wrote in their study.

ancient-meds-34-05_a7300902-cc.jpg
The botanical drug YIV-906 (center) is developed from an 1800-year-old Chinese formula and relies on four naturally derived ingredients: licorice, skullcap, peony, and dates. (Photo credit: Andrew Hurley)

They called the new approach “WE” medicine, a melding of Western medicine — focused on microscopic and single-disease targets — and Eastern medicine, exemplified by traditional Chinese therapies.

A whole-system approach is needed to combat a complex adversary like cancer, Cheng said.

“The reason this drug works is because it has multiple chemicals which can work on multiple sites to alter the whole system of homeostasis,” he said. “It triggers both innate immunity as well as adaptive immunity within the cancer micro-environment.”

All they need now are larger data sets. When the results of the international trial are available about three years from now, YIV-906 may find itself next in a long line of breakthrough drugs developed from natural products, a lineage that includes aspirin (from willow bark); Taxol (from pacific yew tree bark); Tamiflu (from star anise); and Artemisinin, a malaria treatment developed from the Chinese herb Artemisia annua, the discovery of which led to a Nobel Prize for chemist Youyou Tu.

It has been a long journey, but if Cheng and team are successful, it could yield a new approach for treating not only cancer, but for the prevention and treatment of age-related diseases and pulmonary diseases using adapted traditional Chinese medicine, Cheng said.

Said Soderstrom of Yale’s Office of Cooperative Research, “This is an untapped potential people hadn’t thought much about before.”

Liu, who has stuck with Cheng since she first began studying in his lab over two decades ago, through multiple startups and lean times, said his belief in the massive potential of botanical drugs has sustained her.

“Dr. Cheng said, ‘If we get the first Chinese medicine approved as an FDA prescription drug, it will change human history,’” Liu said. “And I believe him.”
:alcoholic: how that stuff made it to yale school of medicine?
 
Chinese Medical Qualifications to Be Recognized Worldwide, Ministry Says

LIAO SHUMIN
DATE: JUN 23 2020
/ SOURCE: YICAI

6036199542358016.jpg


Chinese Medical Qualifications to Be Recognized Worldwide, Ministry Says

(Yicai Global) June 23 -- China has been granted an ‘unconditional pass’ from the global medical education standards body to have medical degrees issued by the country’s institutions of higher learning recognized globally, the Ministry of Education said today.

The MOE’s working committee for the accreditation of medical education has gained approval from the World Federation for Medical Education, a non-governmental organization dedicated to guaranteeing the quality of medical training around the world, it said.

This is a further acknowledgement that China’s higher education standards and accreditation systems meet international benchmarks following the introduction of the country’s engineering qualifications into the Washington Accord in June 2016, said Wu Yan, head of the MOE’s department of higher education. It also signals that China has begun to take part in setting global standards and rules for teaching doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff.

Medical education certification bodies around the world must be accredited by the WFME, which was founded by the World Health Organization and World Medical Association in 1972, in order for their graduates to be accepted by healthcare sectors worldwide.

The MOE has already completed the review process of 106 schools of medicine, around three quarters of the country’s total, Wu said. The next step is to review the remainder, and to expand the coverage to include other specializations such as Traditional Chinese Medicine, stomatology and nursing. The aim is also to achieve a fully recognized licensing of TCM that can help to promote its global growth.

https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/ch...ions-to-be-recognized-worldwide-ministry-says
 
This ancient Chinese anatomical atlas changes what we know about acupuncture and medical histor
September 2, 2020 10.53pm AEST

Authors
Vivien Shaw
Lecturer in Anatomy, Bangor University
Isabelle Catherine Winder
Lecturer in Zoology, Bangor University

The accepted history of anatomy says that it was the ancient Greeks who mapped the human body for the first time. Galen, the “Father of Anatomy”, worked on animals, and wrote anatomy textbooks that lasted for the next 1,500 years. Modern anatomy started in the Renaissance with Andreas Vesalius, who challenged what had been handed down from Galen. He worked from human beings, and wrote the seminal “On the Fabric of the Human Body”.

Scientists from ancient China are never mentioned in this history of anatomy. But our new paper shows that the oldest surviving anatomical atlas actually comes from Han Dynasty China, and was written over 2,000 years ago. Our discovery changes both the history of medicine and our understanding of the basis for acupuncture – a key branch of Chinese medicine.

There is an ever increasing body of evidence-based research that supports the efficacy of acupuncture for conditions as varied as migraine to osteoarthritis of the knee. The most recent draft NICE guidelines, published in August 2020, recommend the use of acupuncture as a first line treatment for chronic pain.

During an acupuncture treatment session, fine needles are inserted into the body at specific points (acupoints) in order to promote self healing. This happens because the needles (somehow) create balance in the life force or “Qi” of the person. How this happens is the subject of much research. The underlying assumption is that acupoints have some as yet undiscovered physiological property that is probably neurologically based.

Ancient Chinese texts
Chinese characters on a brown manuscript.
Mawangdui Manuscript, ink on silk, 2nd century BCE. © Hunan Province Museum

The texts we worked on are the Mawangdui medical manuscripts, which were lost to us for two millenia. They were written during the Han dynasty and were so valued that a copy was buried with the body of Lady Dai, a Han dynasty aristocrat in 168 BCE. The tombs of Lady Dai and her family were opened in 1973, and the Mawangdui manuscripts were discovered.

They are clearly precursors to the famous acupuncture texts of the Yellow Emperor’s Canon of Internal Medicine (Huangdi Neijing), which was copied and recopied through history, and is revered in China as the source of acupuncture theory and practice. The descriptions of meridians and points found in it are still the basis of traditional Chinese medicine today.

The earlier Mawangdui texts don’t actually mention acupuncture points, and the descriptions they give of meridians are simpler and less complete. But some passages from them have clearly been directly copied into the Yellow Emperor’s Canon, all of which shows that these texts were written first.

Man with meridians drawn on

Illustration of traditional Chinese medicine. Wikimedia Commons

Meridian pathways have always been interpreted as being based on esoteric ideas about the flow of vital energy “Qi” rather than as empirical descriptions of the body. But what the Mawangdui text describes is a set of meridians – pathways through the body. In later texts, these are usually illustrated pictorially as lines on the skin.

A meridian is described in terms of how it progresses through the body. The arm tai yin meridian, for instance, is described as starting in the centre of the palm, running along the forearm between the two bones, and so on. We wondered: what if these descriptions are not of an esoteric energy pathway, but of physical anatomical structures?

Dissecting history
To find out, we did detailed dissections of the human body, looking for pathways which ran through it along the routes described in the Mawangdui.

This is a very different view of the body than that of the Western scientist. In modern western medicine, the body is divided into systems that each have their own distinct function: like the nervous system or cardiovascular system.

That clearly wasn’t what the writers of the Mawangdui were doing. Their descriptions are more focused on how different structures interlink to create a flow through the body. They pay no attention to the specific function of the structures. We think this is because these scientists were making their observations of the human body for the first time, and purely described what they saw.

For our research, the anatomical substance of the work had to be unearthed by carefully replicating the authors’ scientific dissections. This was problematic. They had left us no pictures of what they were describing, so we had to reconstruct from their texts. Later Chinese anatomists, from the Song dynasty, did make pictures. These works were based on the recorded dissections of a criminal gang for whom dissection was a part of their punishment.

White statue of a man with Chinese characters drawn on.

An ancient acupuncture statue. Traditional and Modern Medicine/Flickr, CC BY

Then there was the issue of translation: so much can get lost when we translate texts, especially ancient ones, and one of us (Vivien) spent huge amounts of time cross-checking and confirming translations of the meridian descriptions. Finally, we had to look at Han-era society and show that anatomical examination would fit in their cultural context.

What we found was very exciting. Each of the Mawangdui meridians mapped onto major structures of the human body. Some of these structures are visible only to anatomists through dissection, and cannot be seen in the living person. To return to arm tai yin, for instance, the pathway is described at the elbow as going “below the sinew to the bicep”. When we look at the dissected human elbow, there is a flat band of tissue called the bicipital aponeurosis, and the arteries and nerves of the arm pass underneath it.

We think this is what the ancient Chinese anatomists were describing. There is no way to know about these structures except by doing anatomy, or reading the work of someone who has.

The implications
We therefore believe that the Mawangdui manuscripts are the world’s oldest surviving anatomical atlas based on direct observation of the human body. The authors’ purpose presumably was to record the human body in detail. Anatomical examination of this kind would have been a rare privilege, available only to a select group of scientists favoured by the Emperor. It is likely that the purpose of the texts was expressly to pass this knowledge on to others. Physicians and students of medicine could use the texts to learn about anatomy, and engage in medical debate based on a sound knowledge of the human body.

This gives us new insights into the scientific prowess of Han dynasty China, which is famous for its wealth of discoveries. That Han scientists also did anatomy would make perfect sense, and adds richness to our understanding of their science.

Our work also has fundamental implications for acupuncture theory and so for modern research. The Yellow Emperor’s Canon quite clearly draws on and develops the content of the Mawangdui. If the Mawangdui is an anatomical atlas, it is highly likely that the succeeding texts are grounded in anatomy too.

The research shines a light on the hitherto unrecognised contributions of Chinese anatomists, and repositions them at the centre of the field. This new information challenges the perceived esoteric nature of acupuncture, and roots it instead in anatomical science.


https://theconversation.com/this-an...-about-acupuncture-and-medical-history-140506
 
NEWS RELEASE 27-OCT-2020
Identifying potential anti-COVID-19 pharmacological components of TCM | EurekAlert! Science News
COMPUSCRIPT LTD

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This study provides chemical and biochemical evidence of LHQW capsule for the treatment of COVID-19 patients based on the components exposed to human. CREDIT: Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B

Lianhuaqingwen (LHQW) capsule, a herb medicine product, has been clinically proved to be effective in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia treatment. However, human exposure to LHQW components and their pharmacological effects remain largely unknown. The authors of this study aimed to determine human exposure to LHQW components. Based on the human exposure analysis, several ACE2 binding components with good enzyme inhibitory effects were screened out by ACE2 biochromatography. The results obtained by the authors demonstrated chemical and biochemical evidence for exploring molecular mechanisms of therapeutic effects of LHQW capsule for the treatment of COVID-19 patients based on the components exposed to humans.

The research also demonstrated the utility of the human exposure-based approach to identifying pharmaceutically active components in Chinese herb medicines.
 

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