School of Chinese Medicine

Research and Development Division

Director: Prof David W F Fong (until 28 February 2013)
Dr Yu Zhiling (from 1 March 2013)

The Research and Development Division (RDD) has been set up to co-ordinate knowledge transfer activities at the School of Chinese Medicine. RDD facilitates the academic side of herbal drug R&D within the School and with other university departments, local and overseas institutions. Together with IACM Ltd which covers the commercial and manufacturing side of the activities, the two units fulfil the function of knowledge transfer within the field of traditional Chinese medicine.

RDD aims to:

1.	Develop modern scientific and technical methodology relevant to traditional Chinese medicine practices;
2.	Offer consultancy and testing services to Chinese medicine-related industries and other sectors via its research and development programmes;
3.	Build up strategic partnerships with local, regional and international enterprises for the development of Chinese medicine-related products;
4.	Offer teaching and training platforms on analytical and basic medical sciences at undergraduate, postgraduate and postdoctoral levels.

RDD has established a complete chain of quality assurance services, R&D facilities in bioactivity and toxicity screening, and product development facilities for the production of Chinese materia medica through its laboratories:

1.	Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) and Pharmacognosy Laboratory
	On site GAP inspection and macroscopic/microscopic identification ensure genuine and authenticated starting materials are used for toxicity and functionality investigations on Chinese materia medica and functional foods.
2.	Authentication and Safety Testing ISO 17025 Laboratories
	In addition to R&D work on chemical standardization, chemical fingerprinting and other analytical testing services, ISO 17025 safety testing for QA compliance required by the regulatory agents is also provided.
3.	Hung Lai Ching Laboratory of Biomedical Science
	The laboratory provides genomic, proteomic and metabolomic platforms to support molecular studies on bioactivity and toxicity of Chinese materia medica aiming at the identification of bioactive constituents and the development of new drugs or improved formulation.
4.	Product Development Laboratory
	The laboratory assists and collaborates with small and medium enterprises to carry out R&D work on new medicines, health food products and formulations under confidential agreements protecting intellectual property rights.

Please visit out website at http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~scm/research for more information.