Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica Honored by Waters Centers of Innovation Program

Waters Corporation (NYSE: WAT) today welcomed the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica’s (SIMM) Research Center for Modernization of Traditional Chinese Medicine under the direction of Dr. De-an Guo into the Waters Centers of Innovation (COI) Program. The Research Center plays a leading role in the effort to develop standardized methods for analyzing the authenticity and compositional integrity of traditional medicines and bring them into compliance with quality standards instituted by the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA).

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Today in Shanghai, Waters welcomed Dr. De-an Guo and the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica into the Waters Centers of Innovation Program. Pictured (l. to r.) are Professor Yang Ye, Deputy Director of the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica; Dr. De-an Guo, Director - Research Center for Modernization of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica; Mike Harrington, Vice President, European & Asia Pacific Operations, Waters Corporation; and Eric Fotheringham, Director – Waters Centers of Innovation Program, Waters Corporation. (Photo: Business Wire)

Said Yang Ye, Deputy Director of Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, “We are pleased to have our TCM Research Center honored by Waters for the Centers of Innovation Program, the first in China. This is a wonderful opportunity for the Center and Waters to work closely together to tackle the holistic analysis of the complex Chinese herbal system.”

On hand to congratulate Dr. Guo and his team was Dr. Mike Harrington, V.P. Asia/Pacific Operations, Waters Division. “We could not be more excited to be working with Dr. Guo and his fellow researchers at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica,” said Harrington. “The work of the Institute and the Research Center is vital to the efforts to globalize Traditional Chinese Medicine and enlist it in the fight against disease and in the quest to improve human health.”

Said Eric Fotheringham, Director – Waters Centers of Innovation Program, "We are particularly pleased to welcome Dr. Guo and his team into the Waters Centers of Innovation Program, as they are the first COI Program partner focused upon the challenges of characterizing TCM related raw materials and manufactured products."

In his remarks delivered at Wednesday’s ceremony, Brian Smith, V.P. – Mass Spectrometry Operations, Waters Division, said, “Through our partnership with Dr. Guo, and by combining analytical technology with great science, we are helping one another advance TCM and bring it onto a global stage.”

Now that the CFDA regulates Traditional Chinese Medicines and related herbal supplements, Dr. Guo’s Research Center for Modernization of Tradition Chinese Medicine is tasked with developing standardized quality control test methods for herbal medicines and bringing them into routine use. Currently, many TCM quality standards are mostly based on the presence of a single marker in a sample, but as Dr. Guo points out, this approach is not without its drawbacks, since an unscrupulous manufacturer could simply add that single marker into the formulation to falsify the results and make it look like it is something it really isn’t. "We’re now using UPLC to profile the whole chemical composition, and to quantify the multiple active markers, not just a single marker," said Dr. Guo. "By taking a more holistic approach to quality control, including fingerprint profiling, multi-component quantification, testing for pesticides, heavy metals, and microbial contaminations we can identify whether it is the true herb and attest to its quality."

To fulfill its mission, the Center uses a variety of state-of-the art instruments in addition to the Waters^® ACQUITY^® UPLC^® System. They include the Waters ACQUITY QDa^® Mass Detector, the ACQUITY UPC^2® Convergence Chromatography™ system, and a Xevo^® G2-XS QTof mass spectrometer. The Center also relies on modern informatics platforms, such as the Waters UNIFI^® Scientific Information System to maintain high working efficiency.

Waters officially saluted the work of Dr. Guo and Research Center for TCM Modernization with a ceremony and three-day conference organized in part and sponsored by the Waters Centers of Innovation Program. The 2015 Shanghai International Conference on Traditional Chinese Medicine and Natural Medicine is featuring presentations and a panel discussion by more than three dozen experts in TCM.

Asked what the recognition means to him, Dr. Guo said, “It’s really an honor and a privilege for Waters to take so much interest in the work we do. I’m looking at this as an opportunity to deepen our collaboration and working together on quality monographs for Chinese herbal medicines for the Chinese pharmacopoeia and others, such as United States Pharmacopoeia and European Pharmacopoeia.”

Dr. Guo, as Editor-in-Chief, recently co-authored an article in the World Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine in which the authors document the progress of China’s TCM modernization efforts and the challenges it still faces.

About Traditional Chinese Medicine

For more than 2,000 years, medicines derived from natural sources have been a staple of Chinese medical practice. In the late 1990’s, the Chinese government initiated an effort to modernize TCM. Broadly defined, this effort intends to push for the acceptance and integration of Chinese medical philosophy into western medical practice and seek regulatory approval of herbal medicines to treat disease.

The effort, involving government, pharmaceutical industry and academic scientists, has resulted in the adoption of over 50 TCM quality monographs by the United States or European Pharmacopeias. Several TCM products are also in mid-to-late-stage clinical trials in the U.S. and Europe.

About the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences

The Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences emerged from the Institute of Materia Medica of the Peking Academy of Sciences, founded in 1932. By combining basic and applied research in chemistry and biological disciplines, SIMM carries out modern drug discovery. SIMM is also involved in the discovery of new therapeutic targets and carries out comprehensive pre-clinical evaluation of drug candidates, while also promoting commercialization, thereby playing a key role in building China's drug innovation capabilities. For more information, visit http://www.simm.cas.cn.

About Waters Centers of Innovation Program

Established in 2010, Waters Centers of Innovation Program recognizes accomplished scientists and their institutions for research in the fields of the health sciences, pharmaceuticals, chemical materials, food and environmental chemistry, mass spectrometry and separations science. By partnering with leading scientists and connecting them with experts in mass spectrometry and separations science, Waters endeavors to bring about inspired thinking that converts ideas into reality.

The participants in the Waters Centers of Innovation Program include: Professor Ganesh Anand, National University of Singapore; Professor Luiz Claudio Cameron, UniRio, Brazil; Professor David Clemmer, Indiana University; Professor Daniel Tsun-Yee Chiu, Chang Gung University; Dr. Joseph Dalluge, University of Minnesota; Dr. Petur Weihe Dalsgaard, University of Copenhagen; Professor Marcos Eberlin, University of Campinas, Brazil; Professor Chris Elliott, Queen’s University Belfast; Professor John Engen, Northeastern University; Professor Albert J. Fornace, Jr., Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center; Professor David Goodlett and Dr. Maureen Kane, University of Maryland; Professor De-an Guo, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica; Dr. Frank Gonzalez, National Cancer Institute; Dr. Carlo R. Largiadèr, Dr. Jean-Francois DuFour and Dr. Martin Fiedler, Inselspital University Hospital, Bern, Switzerland; Professor Julie Leary, University of California – Davis; Professor Amit Kumar Mandal, St. John’s Research Institute, Bangalore, India; Professor John McLean, Vanderbilt University; Professor Arthur Moseley, Duke University; Professor Jeremy Nicholson, Imperial College London; Dr. Devin Peterson, University of Minnesota; Associate Professor Jessica Prenni, Colorado State University; Dr. Serge Rezzi, Nestle Institute of Health Sciences; Dr. Ryan Rodgers, Future Fuels Institute, Florida State University; Professor Pauline Rudd, National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training; Professor James Scrivens, University of Warwick; Professor Vladimir Shulaev, University of North Texas; Dr. Norman Smith, Kings College London; Professor Sarah Trimpin, Wayne State University; Professor Bert van Bavel, Örebro University; Caroline West and Eric Lesselier, University of Orleans, Orleans, France; and Professor Vicki Wysocki, The Ohio State University.

About Waters Corporation (www.waters.com)

Waters Corporation (NYSE: WAT) develops and manufactures advanced analytical and material science technologies for laboratory dependent organizations. For more than 50 years, the company has pioneered a connected portfolio of separations science, laboratory information management, mass spectrometry and thermal analysis systems.

Waters, ACQUITY, UPLC, UPC², Xevo, QDa, UNIFI and Convergence Chromatography are trademarks of Waters Corporation.

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