Biotechnology is giving Chinese herbal medicine a new lease on life, according to industry pundits, who say new laws and ways of researching traditional medicine are opening a US$18.5 billion market to Taiwanese firms.
At the Symposium on Herbal Medicine Market Development held in Taipei yesterday, several German researchers painted a picture of a new world of opportunity in herbal medicine, so long as scientific methods and extensive documentation -- including clinical drug trials -- are used to back up healing claims.
According to Gerhard Franz, a professor at the University of Regensburg in Germany, there has been a strong revival in the use of herbal remedies. Patients are choosing herbal medicines as opposed to synthetic drugs in order to cut down on side effects due to the perception that herbal remedies are natural, and therefore better for you than modern medicines.
This claim is disputable, according to another researcher, who said some herbal remedies cause liver damage and have other unwanted side effects.
The world market for herbal medicines has grown 9 percent over the past five years, according to market researcher Euromonitor, after slower growth in previous years. Europe was the largest market in 1999, taking 38 percent of the total, or US$6.69 billion. The US came in second with purchases of US$4.07 billion, while Asia outside of Japan took third with US$3.2 billion.
The three top selling herbs worldwide are, in order, Ginkgo biloba, Ginseng and Garlic. The German firm, Willmar Schwabe GmbH & Co, Pharmaceuticals, is currently working with the US National Institute of Health (NIH, head of the Human Genome Project) to prove the efficacy of Ginkgo biloba, which the firm claims can prevent or delay changes in memory as people get older, including the onset of dementia and Alzheimer's disease.
Head of research at the company, Karl Stumpf, said his firm won the NIH research opportunity through research diligence. He advised Taiwanese researchers working with herbal medicines to keep three factors in mind, all of which are important to pass stringent health and safety regulations in the US and Europe: Herbs used as medicine must be of high quality, the level of quality and chemical make-up must be consistently reproducible, and all compounds must undergo thorough testing for toxins.
Herbs grown in the wild are generally subjected to the same toxins as vegetables, including pesticides, heavy metals in soil and other contaminants. Among Chinese herbs imported into Europe, some were found to have large amounts of lead, cadmium and mercury, according to Franz. He advised companies to grow their herbs under controlled conditions, keeping them away from contaminated soil or pesticides.
A number of Taiwanese biotech start-ups are looking to traditional Chinese herbal medicines for drug discovery breakthroughs. Advanced Gene Technology Corp (先進基因), a Taichung-based firm, yesterday launched its ACG Chip, a plastic slide which helps researchers determine the chemical make-up of an herb.
Not at all like a computer chip, "bio-chips" are usually glass slides or plastic slides about the size of a name card which are laced with chemicals and used with a microscope to chemically or genetically analyze a chemical or biological compound.
For example, some bio-chips are used for blood analysis. A drop of blood is placed on the chip, then the chemicals on the chip react with the blood and change into a color or series of colors which the lab technician can compare to charts and determine what is in the blood.
Another Taiwanese firm looking to Chinese herbal medicines is U-Vision Biotech Inc (微晶生技). The firm believes new tools made available through the information-technology revolution have enabled biotech to move forward, and they hope to find drug targets within the vast area of Chinese herbal medicine. Changing laws are also fueling this move toward herbal medicines, according to Eric Tzeng (曾驥孟), president of U-Vision.
"Now [government regulators] are moving away from emphasizing only one single compound and allow you to have a mixture. They want you to identify the structure and the properties of individual natural compounds -- they have changed the FDA [US Food and Drug Administration] guidelines for botanical drug products. So now everybody has the potential to find good [drug targets] from herbal medicine," he said.
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