Traditional Chinese medicine has taken a new step towards the
global market.
Kanglaite injection, an anti-cancer Chinese traditional medicine,
has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration of the United
States to be used for clinical human experiment, according to
sources with the State
Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
This is the first time that a traditional Chinese medicine has been
approved for clinic experiment in the United States, the sources
said.
Last month, the injection, invented by Zhejiang Kanglaite
Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd in Hangzhou, east China's
Zhejiang Province, went through a four-month clinical
experiment on 15 to 18 volunteers in a hospital located in Salt
Lake City, Utah in the United States.
All the data will be studied and analyzed before new rounds of
experiments are allowed to start and before it is licensed for
sale, according to Li Dapeng, the medicine's researcher.
The first group of people who received the injection as part of the
clinical experiment have showed satisfactory results, and the
medicine is considered effective and safe, said Li.
Kanglaite injection is developed from the liquid distilled from the
seeds of Job's tears, which is a kind of herbal medicine.
It
is targeted to effectively kill cancer cells while upgrading the
immune capacity of the human body.
In
China, the medicine has been used in thousands of clinical
experiments and by more than 200,000 tumor patients. The results
show that the medicine is effective in its anti-cancer actions and
has no apparent side effects.
The active compound, production techniques and prescriptions of the
medicine have received patent certificates in countries like the
United States, Japan and the European Union.
The medicine enjoys the largest sales volume among Western and
traditional Chinese anti-cancer medicines in China.
Despite China's long history of the use of traditional Chinese
medicines, the country's export volume of them accounts for less
than 5 percent of the world's sales volume of traditional Chinese
medicine.
(China Daily 07/09/2001)