The subject of pharmaceutical chemistry in our school has distinctive advantages in the minority medicine subject. Its research mainly concerns with the following directions:
(Ⅰ)Active ingredients in natural medicine and the research and development of new medicine
Herb-based traditional medicine of each ethnic group is the rich potential resource of contemporary global medicine market, but scarcely have them been developed. In the development of new medicine, it is not quite effective to follow the previous pharmaceutical research pattern in which the research starts with the study of the relationship between diseases and medical efficacy, and then goes deep into the molecular mechanism. Chemists have synthesized millions of chemical compounds to form a database, which can provide the target for drug screening. However, most of these numerous chemical pounds only have simple structures, while clinically the pharmaceutically effective molecule’s structures are not simple. As a consequence, it is not easy to develop potential new medicine from the existing database. However, follow the reverse pharmacological research pattern that medicine discovery is prior to the realization of its mode of action and mechanism will significantly reduce the development expenditures and time. That means, taking the traditional medicine which has been used to cure the diseases and was confirmed as highly safe and effective to be the resource of chemical compound, and following the pharmaceutical action mechanism to screen out the biologically active material or even define the effective components in medicines by using drug targets such as receptor, ion channel and enzyme. Besides, traditional medicine is the essence of traditional medicine which can reflect the unique feature of it. The research and development of each nationality’s traditional medicine has great significance in the economic promotion of minority area and the medical and health cause which serve the people. On account of this, our school emphasizes the research on the minority medicine’s variety, resource distribution, and clinical application in south china (such as the Tujia nationality, Miao nationality, the Dai nationality, the Yi nationality and the Yao nationality) to provide scientific basis for the protection, cultivation and sustainable development of minority medicine. And based on the relevance of consanguinity—chemical constituents—pharmacological activity/efficacy, we carries out researches in which the theories and methodology of the ethnobotany and pharmaco phylogenetics are uses to develop new medicine resource from the minority medicine which have similar efficacy and which belong to the related species.
Since the special processing technique of traditional medicine is essential for the guarantee of traditional medicine’s toxicity reducing and efficacy enhancing and medication safety, the program also emphasizes the development and sorting of the traditional medicine’s traditional processing technique of the minorities in south China (such as the Tujia nationality, Miao nationality, the Dai nationality, the Yi nationality and the Yao nationality), according to which we regulate, innovate and discuss about these processing techniques.
Because almost all the minority medicines are traditional dosage forms which can not conform to the requirement of modern medication, we make great effort to undertake secondary development for minority medicine, and to carry out enhanced research on their quality standard to ensure the “safety, efficacy and quality control” of drug use. Besides, we search for and take the effective parts and effective constituents of minority medicine as primer, and then make use of modern organic chemistry and computer technology to do structural modification and structural function relation research, base on which we make developments and innovations on minority medicines.
(Ⅱ) Research on minority medicine’ medicinal effective components and its mechanism of action
Minority medicines are often compounds of multiple chemical components and have multiple pharmaceutical effects. The pharmacology research of minority medicine has to not only explain their mechanism of pharmaceutical action, but also define the basis of medicinal effective components that produce the specific pharmacological effect. These problems can not be settled only by means of medical science itself which is characterized by the methodology of qualitative observation, phenomena generalization. Instead, it will be possible to settle these problems gradually if the research is based on methodologies characterized by quantitative observation and systematic analysis, and the comprehensive using of the advanced technology of medicine and pharmacology and engineering science. In the traditional research pattern, they only look into the chemical components separated from the minority medicine or the medicine’s own efficacy, but do not associate the efficacy of the original medicine with the efficacy of other chemical components. Since the multiple pharmacological effect of minority medicine is probably different form the effect of their constituents, this pattern can hardly have any benefit in the explanation of the medicines’ pharmacological mechanism, nor can it be helpful to make sure which components on what degree have the specific pharmacological effect in the original medicine, nor can it identify whether the interaction relationship of the specific pharmacological effect produced between the chemical components in the original medicine still exist in the extracted chemical components or not. On account of these fundamental key problems, we put forward a new basic principle of methodology. That is, we take the pharmacological effect in minority medicine as reference, compare their components’ (combined components’) effect to that of the original medicine’s, searching for a primer for new medicine development which can replace the effective components’ (combined components’) of the original medicine . Based on this principle, we not only established the modern quantitative concept of the minority medicine’s medicinal effective components, forming a research framework of the minority medicine’s pharmacology and material basis; but also transferred the research of minority medicine’s basic effective components to the inspection, expression and analysis of the relationship of minority medicine’s pharmacological effect and that of their components’—a problem which can be researched with the requirement of modern science. Besides, we also came up with a research methodology: when identifying the pharmacological effective components, the research should follow the sequence of from simple component to multiple components, from in vitro to in vivo.
We put our emphasis on these minority medicines which have certain effect in neurological diseases, because the pathogenesis and drug action target of most of these medicines are relevant to the specific proteins on the nerve cell membrane—ion channel, receptor, enzyme, etc. The product of the combination of modern science and electronic information science—patch clamp, intracellular microelectrode, extracellular recording and multi-array recording technology—can help us to reliably observe medicine’s effect on the intercellular communication, ion channel and receptor. On this basis, and combine with mathematical modeling and computer simulation, we can explain some specific neuropharmacological efficacy mechanism produced by this kind of medicine and identify the material basis of this efficacy from the molecule, cell and the overall level, according to which we can disclose the essence of science. The methodology formed in this kind of research can provide a reference to the research and development of other kinds of minority medicines, thus contributing to the disclosure and enhance of minority medicine’s scientific connotation and providing foundation for the economic benefit created by minority medicine’s entering of global market.
This program goes in accordance with the minority medicine’s research and development concept explained above. And based on our unique methodology, we undertake deep research in two aspects—material basis and molecular mechanism—on the minority medicine which has certain efficacy to some complex diseases, which provides abundant material to academic dissertation writing.
(Ⅲ)Modern pharmaceutical analysis
The researches of this direction includes: research in the technique and method of modern pharmaceutical analysis to fully obtain different kind of chemical information in the complex system related to medical research; research in the active ingredient group and its efficacy mechanism of minority medicine (including Chinese medicine) using the strategies of systems biology; research in the interaction between medicine and bio-macromolecules such as protein and acceptor; research in the quality control method and quality standard of minority medicine (including Chinese medicine) and chemicals; research in the resource and quality identifying analysis method of minority medicine (including Chinese medicine). We have been keeping close eyes on the new trends of global pharmacy development and the new achievements of analytical science, and we have been using new technologies to practically settle the problems of qualitative and quantitative analytical methods which are related to medicine quality control and pharmaceutical research.
The distinctive features of this direction are: using theories of Chinese medicine and minority medicine to establish a new analytical methodology system which concentrates on the minority medicine (including Chinese medicine) biochip analysis technology, minority medicine (including Chinese medicine) full-quantified fingerprint technology (including chromatography, spectrum, nuclear magnetism, mass spectrometry, etc); exploring new quality control method of minority medicine (including Chinese medicine), and new research technology of the pharmacological effective constituents basis and constituent analysis method of minority medicine (including Chinese medicine); utilizing the analysis and characterization of minority medicine’s (including Chinese medicine)property and flavor and the quality identification of medical resource; exploring the minority medicine’s (including Chinese medicine) metabolism and vivo-perception research techniques on dynamics to achieve the safety, efficacy and controllability of minority medicine’s (including Chinese medicine)quality.