Chinese Herbs

[Guest guest]

The Wall Street Journal today was quite full of interesting

articles. Here's another one on Ancient Chinese herbs:

 

On the Trail of Ancient Cures

Swiss Drug Maker Novartis

Looks to

In Its Search for New Products

By NICHOLAS ZAMISKA

November 15, 2006; Page B1

 

SHANGHAI -- On an afternoon in Xinjiang province in China's remote

and mountainous west, botanist Shen Jingui was searching for a snow

lotus, a grayish-white flower used for centuries in Chinese medicine

to alleviate the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome. He spotted the

plant on a rock ledge and shimmied across to pick it. He slipped and

plunged some 30 yards, slamming into rocks on the way down.

 

When he regained consciousness, local farmers were putting him on a

horse to take him to the nearest health clinic, several hours

away. " I was very scared, " he recalls of the incident, " but I was

happy to collect the material. "

 

 

Shen Jingui, head botanist at the Shanghai Institude of Materia

Medica, examines the Stemona Sessilifolia plant, used in ancient

Chinese medicine to fight coughs and human parasites.

Mr. Shen, head botanist for the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica,

a government-funded laboratory, has spent three decades trekking

across China and going to great lengths to ferret out rare plants and

herbs traditionally used in treatments for ailments ranging from

aches and pains to cancer.

 

His bag of plants has captured the interest of Swiss drug giant

Novartis AG, which since 2000 has invested several million dollars in

a venture with SIMM. Last month, Novartis struck a similar deal with

the Kunming Institute of Botany, an organization that works with

traditional remedies in the country's southwestern Yunnan province.

Earlier this month, Novartis announced it will invest about $100

million in its own pharmaceutical research-and-development center in

Shanghai.

 

Facing soaring costs in developing new drugs and a limited pipeline

of promising candidates, Novartis hopes that traditional Chinese

medicines will hold the secrets for a new generation of blockbusters

to fight diseases such as Alzheimer's. While Novartis isn't the only

multinational drug company seeking to tap traditional Chinese cures --

French drug maker Servier also has a collaboration with SIMM --

Rachel Lee, a senior manager at Boston Consulting Group in Shanghai,

says " no other major pharma has gone further than Novartis " in this

area.

 

The collaboration between East and West on drug development is in

many ways an unlikely one. Chinese and Western specialists approach

pharmacology from very different angles. For centuries, Chinese

doctors have tinkered with different mixtures of medicines, guided in

part by trial and error, to see which ones are most effective.

Working with that body of knowledge, they operate on the assumption

that the traditional remedies work, even if by Western scientific

standards it's not completely clear why. Chinese doctors " know it

will cure people, but they don't know what target it hits, " says Shen

Jingkang, a professor at SIMM.

 

In contrast, researchers at Western pharmaceutical companies often

begin the search for a drug by identifying a target, and then look

for a chemical compound that has the desired effect. If they do find

a drug that works, they usually understand the mechanism behind it.

That helps in refining the compound to make it more effective and in

convincing regulatory authorities such as the U.S. Food and Drug

Administration that the medicine is safe and effective.

 

 

Botanist Shen Jingui, right, and his assistant dig for medicinal

plants in China's Jiangsu province.

Novartis hopes to isolate the particular compounds active in the

Chinese traditional medicines by testing the raw extracts from plants

collected by Mr. Shen and fellow botanists.

 

" There are so many compounds in nature, from the seas to the jungles,

it's very difficult to know where to start, " says Paul Herrling, the

head of corporate research at Novartis. " China has thousands of

years' experience of using plants in Chinese traditional medicines.

The idea was, why not use the Chinese experience as a kind of filter? "

 

Novartis has experienced the potential of Chinese traditional

medicines firsthand. The company's malaria drug Coartem stems from a

traditional Chinese cure for fever. Mention of the plant, Artemisia

annua L. or sweet wormwood, was found in a Chinese medicine book

written on silk, unearthed from a tomb of the West Han Dynasty, which

began around 200 B.C. Chinese military scientists developed the drug

from the plant in the 1970s to treat Chinese soldiers suffering from

malaria in Vietnam. In the early 1990s, Novartis struck a deal with

the Chinese to purchase the rights to Coartem, a combination of a

derivative of the plant and another antimalarial treatment, paying a

few million dollars up front and royalties on future sales. Novartis

declined to reveal the revenue it makes on the drug, most of which it

sells to developing countries at $1 per treatment.

 

Since the venture began, Novartis says SIMM has provided around 1,000

natural products to the Swiss drug company's laboratories in Basel.

In return, Novartis has agreed to pay SIMM royalties and fees if

certain plants yield marketable pharmaceuticals.

 

So far, nine of the compounds have shown particular promise against

specific disease targets, and two have been selected for further

study, according to Dr. Herrling. While those numbers may seem small,

the search for drugs using conventional methods is far less fruitful,

he says. The investment is also small when stacked up against

Novartis's typical research-and-development outlays.

 

In this particular project, it all goes back to a small group of

botanists led by Mr. Shen -- before any research can begin in the

lab, they must venture out in the field and find the plant.

 

On a recent afternoon at the laboratory in Shanghai, Mr. Shen dried

lily bulbs and snow pine branches in small, neat piles on the floor

of a sun-soaked hallway. He says he decided on this line of work

when, as a student at a Shanghai university, he saw a film about the

life of a Chinese botanist. The movie had a sad ending: The botanist

dies after an accident collecting plants in a remote area and is

carried home on the back of a horse. Nevertheless, Mr. Shen found the

story inspiring.

 

" I love this career, " says Mr. Shen, whose forearms and legs are

covered with scars from his arduous trips to collect rare plants.

 

One of his most memorable finds was in spring 1999. Shortly after the

snows melted, he set out on a weeklong journey to western China's

remote Qinghai plateau. He was searching for a certain type of Aweto,

an exceedingly rare fungus that Chinese-medicine doctors believe

helps strengthen the immune system and fend off cancers. When dried,

it looks like a small light-brown caterpillar.

 

Mr. Shen hired a guide and set off on horseback into the mountains,

armed with descriptions from old Chinese texts. Deep in the forest,

he spotted something, and got off his horse for a closer look.

 

" We won! We finally got it! " he recalls shouting as he jumped up and

down. " I was screaming, 'I found it -- I found it!' " Gathering

hundreds of bunches, he put them in his bag for the journey back to

Shanghai.

 

---- Juying Qin in Hong Kong contributed to this article.

 

Dede