WHO Report - Biotechnology to Support Chinese Medicine Claims
WHO Report - Biotechnology to Support Chinese Medicine Claims
The use of herbal medicines, also known as traditional medicine, represents around 40% of the Chinese pharmaceutical market, with an annual sales of about US$ 21 billion. It is also big in other Asian countries where up to 80% of some populations use it for health care, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Moreover, TCM has proved it to be clinically effective as well as quality concerns.
Recently an article in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization reports that Chinese researchers tap biotechnology to improve its drug quality standards and to convince the international research community that traditional Chinese medicine has a solid evidential basis. The Chinese traditional medicine-based research and development, funded by the National Institute of Health of the United States of America, will try to increase the prospects of obtaining biologically active hits to specific diseases, representing a tremendous advantage to drug discovery and development.
For more information, please visit http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/90/8/12-020812/en/