The new partnership has given Nestle Health Science access to a traditional Chinese medicine library of over 50,000 extracts from 1,200 different herbal plants.

 

　　Christian Hogg is the CEO of Hutchison China MediTech and general manager of Nutrition Science Partners.

 

　　"What we're doing is bringing global standard research and development methodologies and techniques to studying substances that have a long history of use in humans. Traditional Chinese Medicine is part of the social fabric in China. It is between 30 and 40 percent of all pharmaceutical sales in China. So what we're doing is bringing best practice, global screening technologies, and research and discovery activities to try to identify relevant therapies in the gastro-intestinal area."

 

　　The new drug, HMPL-004, is set for Phase Three trials in the US and Europe in the first quarter of this year.

 

　　If made available in the global market, it will be a drug that doctors prescribe to sufferers of Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.

 

　　Mr Hogg says that parallel to the development of HMPL-004 NSP plans to be an engine of innovation in the gastro-intestinal medical field:

 

　　"We want Nutrition Science Partners to be putting out new drug candidates or new medical food candidates on a regular basis. We are starting up a large R&D team to do this research and we'll have full access to the Hutchison Medi-Pharma Botanical substance library R&D platform."

 

　　Dr Karen Himlok is South African traditional Chinese medicine practitioner who practices in Beijing.

 

　　Many of Dr Himlok's patients are foreigners living in China.

 

　　She says that global accessibility of traditional Chinese medicine is on the rise:

 

　　"Back in the day people would have to take a formulation of herbs, go home and cook it for two hours and boil it up and drink this very bitter pungent tonic and now they've changed all of that. These things are available in a pill, or a capsule. When these herbs are being manufactured they are also going through inspection and hygiene protocols so they are becoming safer. All over the world the profession has gone through quite a lot to improve the use of Chinese medicine. The only thing left really is to promote and have good practice."

 

　　Dr Himlok also says that Western patients have increasing interest in taking natural medicine alternatives.

 

　　For CRI, this is Alexandra Blucher.