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Tu Youyou's win boosts China TCM research
屠呦呦獲諾獎促進中國科學研究
Traditional Chinese medicine is an age-old healing system used to treat almost everything from arthritis to depression. It's long been a source of controversy both in China and abroad. It is a science or philosophy? A milestone in the international recognition of TCM came when Tu Youyou won a Nobel Prize for her discovery of a medicinal herb to treat malaria.
Zheng Xikang is on a mission to find a cure for arthritis. He’s been looking to the Chinese herb hotopterygium incisum, or Qianghuo in Chinese, for possible answers.
"I study the roots and rhizome of qianghuo. In traditional Chinese medicine, it’s used for symptoms from rheumatoid arthritis and joint aches. What I’m trying to do is to isolate its effective component to explain its medical properties," he said.
But traditional Chinese medicine has been wrought with controversy, with some scholars, both at home and abroad arguing that it’s a pseudoscience that should be eliminated from public health care and academia.
Zheng Xikang doesn’t know what his research will lead to. But he has just been given a fresh dose of inspiration.
"The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute has today awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with one half… to Tu Youyou for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against malaria," he said.
The therapy is artemisinin, an anti-malarial agent drawn from a wormwood herb called Artemisia annual.
"I think this is very encouraging for us, because it shows the doctrines of Chinese medicine actually make sense. Although there are many things we still can’t explain, we can search for answers based on our ancient medical tradition," Zheng said.
But international recognition of traditional Chinese medicine remains daunting. Its complex biological interactive system is often puzzling for researchers, and its cosmological notions such as the yin and yang have proven difficult even for the domestic public.
But that's slowly changing, as modern methods are being increasingly adopted in TCM research.
"Tradition is our source of inspiration, and modern technology takes it further. They don't go against each other. They go hand in hand with each other," said Zhao Haiyu, Assoc. Professor, Chinese Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences.
"We use modern technology to isolate the components, in order to find the effective ingredient. This is how artemisinin was discovered. We can also use modern methods to find out why our ancestors used these medicines, to understand this traditional medical system," said Shen Jianying, Assoc. Professor, Chinese Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences.
Looking at the wisdom of the past, researchers hope to solve medical problems of the present.
