Healthcare and Science thomsonreuters.com

One area of work I am focused on is preclinical and clinical development of new botanical drugs derived from Chinese herbal medicine as well as rescuing or repositioning small molecule investigational new drugs whose clinical developments were discontinued.

Chinese herbal medicine is a precious inheritance and I personally believe that it will continue to be very effective. My team's interest is in a possible future that one day we can design and develop new botanical drugs derived from traditional Chinese herbal medicine for unresolved human medical needs.

Due to the nature of Chinese herbal medicine it is generally mild yet effective and people will certainly benefit from it. To achieve results our research and development involves (but is not limited to) the screening of biologically active compounds or fractions, isolation and enrichment or purification, quality control, manufacturing and preclinical and clinical development. So of course this mirrors the process for synthetic drug development yet our work is very different.

We are currently focusing on liver diseases, such as Chronic hepatitis B, Chronic hepatitis C, liver fibrous, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma — mainly because these are very prevalent diseases in China. For drug rescuing, we hope that we can leverage Taiwan's competitive edge in clinical treatment of liver diseases to bring discontinued investigational new drugs back to clinical trial again.

My work specifically focuses on investigational new drug (IND) submissions — looking at the planning and control of tasks involved in the R&D activities, quality control of study reports we generate and establishing IND packages for submission to health authorities. This can involve new structures of antibody drugs, new anti-hepatitis B and C Chinese herbal drugs as well as anti-asthmatic drugs.

Thomson Pharma is very useful for me in gathering information relevant to investigational new drug candidates selected for rescuing study. The Thomson Pharma drug reports are very well written and organized, and they contain the most up to date comprehensive information in regard to investigational new drug development status quo, deal situation, patent position, chemistry, toxicity, mechanism of action, and information of clinical trials conducted. With Thomson Pharma drug reports, we could provide to experts in the team complete drug information of the selected candidates and consult their opinions in an efficient manner.