Following the 2012 National Science and Technology Progress Awards awarded by the Council of China, the research team from the State Key Laboratory (SKL) of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine (MUST) received the First Prize of Natural Science Awards in the Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology) awarded by the Ministry of Education of china. This is the first time of receiving such an award in the Macau’s institutions.
The SKL research team lead by Chair Professor Liu Liang (team members: Vincent Wong Kam Wai, Jiang Zhi-hong, Wang Jing-rong, Leung Lai Han, Zhou Hua and Li Ting), has won the award titled in “Studies on the Network-based Modulatory Mechanism of the Holistic Therapy of Traditional Chinese Medicine”. Based on the theories of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and the bioactive components contained in Chinese herbal medicine, the research team developed a series of integrated advanced technologies and methods in chemistry, pharmacology, cell and molecular biology, systems biology, bioinformatics, computational biology for the studies, and they successfully unraveled the mechanistic actions and network-based modulatory mechanisms of active single or multiple chemical component(s) of Chine herbal medicine (CHM). Also, a number of academic research articles were published in SCI journals with higher citations. Besides, the research team has firstly proposed a new strategy for R&D of the network-based multi-targets drugs, as well as a new model of personalized randomized clinical trials (PRCT). By using a variety of omics technologies, the research team has further revealed the cytoprotective effect of CHM composition via network-based modulation as well. Those researches have provided evidences to establish the theoretical basis and scientific foundations of using holistic treatment principle of TCM via Chinese herbal formulas for treating diseases, especially for the pathologically complicated diseases like systemic diseases.
The project leader, Chair Professor Liu Liang said that winning of the award indicates that the search conducted in SKL (MUST) has reached the international standards that has been highly recognized by the experts and scholars in China. Furthermore, he would express his sincere thanks to the central government of China, the Macao S.A.R. government, and the community for their strong support to the research. He further emphasized that as experienced researchers, winning awards should not be the purpose of doing research, instead, for promoting academic development, and social and economic growth. In this connection, the research teams as well as the university will put more efforts for accelerating industrialization of those research findings and achievement in the coming future.
