Taipei Times: Could you give our readers an idea of what your company is about and some of its products?
Eric Tzeng: Let's try to keep this short. This company is basically a "drug discovery company." We are focusing on some herbal medicines, which some people call traditional Chinese medicine. But, the discovery of new drugs takes a lot of time, so [in the mean time] we plan to develop some tools [to bring in revenue for the company].
These tools are highly refined screening tools. Very accurate, very sensitive -- what we call microfabricated devices -- including some so-called bio-chips, DNA micro arrays, things like that help shorten the period of drug development. So, basically the company is focusing on this part. We are focusing on three areas: breast cancer, diabetes and wound-healing.
Chiu Sung-kay: Our emphasis is on discovering new ingredients from Chinese medicine. You know, people have years of experience using these medicines and they have learned how these medicines cure certain diseases. There is actually a big database there. So we just get the information from there and purify the useful components into a drug form.
TT: How did your company develop new products so fast? You only started a few years ago?
Tzeng: We had to develop some lethal weapons, some screening tools first. So we launched a few products. A DNA micro array -- that's a gene chip or bio-chip -- and we're also developing the EZ Spot, a universal chip. In the US last year they consumed 100 million of these.
[Unlike a computer chip, a bio-chip typically is used to detect diseases or for inspecting genetic or chemical make-up. Some are glass slides specially coated with a chemical to help detect certain bio-agents. Others are square plastic slabs the size of a business card on which a drop of blood or other chemical is placed for analysis. Then, a change in colors on the "chip" tells lab technicians what they want to know]
TT: What is the "lethal weapon" -- or your special product?
Chiu: It is a glass slide and we put a very special chemical on it. It's our own chemical, we developed it ourselves, and it is very sticky.
So, when you put on some DNA, it will appear as a very tiny spot and when it is magnified we will see many genes. Each patient that has a problem, we get their genes and see how their gene activity differs from normal [when they are not sick]. When you put [the genes] on our slide, you can see the difference. This change in color will tell us what is wrong with the patient.
That's very important. The old concept was that there is one gene for each disease, but we have found that there are multiple genes that control each disease.
The company is also able to take information gathered from patients and the results of the EZ spot tests and form it into a database for use by researchers.
TT: Is this much less expensive or faster than the old way of testing?
Tzeng: Definitely, much faster. We used to use a test tube to do one spot at a time, the new technique cuts down on time and money.
TT: A lot of companies in Taiwan are focusing on Chinese herbal medicine, just like you. What sets you apart?
Tzeng: Actually, there are many problems to work on. So far in Taiwan, companies are only interested in turning the herbal medicine into a powder to put into a capsule or into a nutrient drink or herbal tea, something like that. But that can only be defined as food. It cannot be validated by the FDA [US Food and Drug Administration] and you cannot make a lot of profit. If you can turn the herbal medicine into a drug, then you can make a huge profit, but if you just define the medicine as a food, you cannot make big money.
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