A jar of browny-green goo is all it took to end Dr Stephen Minger’s doubts
about whether traditional Chinese medicine could teach anything to
Western science. When a colleague walked into the leading stem cell
scientist’s lab at King’s College London with a Chinese remedy that he
believed could boost brain cell growth, and asked if he could test his
theory on some neurons that Dr Minger had grown in his lab, he wasn’t keen.
“My first thought was ‘you’re not putting that on my cells’. But it turned out
to be amazing stuff. It really stimulated the cells to grow; they grew like
weeds,” recalls Dr Minger, the ponytailed scientist who has has been in the
spotlight since 2003, when his team created the UK’s first lab-grown human
embryonic stem cells. These are the “blank-slate” cells that have the power
to turn into any cell of the body and may be key in producing more effective
treatments for diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson’s.
But for all of his scientific credentials, Dr Minger is about to step out of
the conventional and into the alternative. At the time of the “green-goo”
incident, neither he nor his colleague had the time or money to investigate
further the ancient remedy that produced such an astonishing effect. But the
experience stayed with Dr Minger and he began to view Chinese medicine in a
different light. If its remedies could make brain cells grow, could they
help to treat diseases that destroy the brain such as Alzheimer’s?
Now the Government has asked him to head a two-year project aimed at
strengthening links between UK and Chinese scientists. He immediately
thought of using the project as a way of probing the ancient cures of
traditional Chinese medicine, often referred to as TCM, to see if they can
be converted into modern treatments.
Searching for tangible effects
The project starts this month. Dr Minger will fly to Shanghai to bring
together Alzheimer’s scientists in the UK with Chinese researchers in the
hope of mining TCM for new medicines for the disease. He believes that the
traditional system, based on energy flow in the body, yin and yang,
anecdotal evidence and treatments made from ground-up plant and animal
products, can help evidence-based Western medicine. So do many drug
developers in the West who are turning their attention to TCM in the hope
that the thousands of remedies in its armoury may have tangible biological
and therapeutic effects.
“I think there are clearly active ingredients in some of these plant extracts
which have potent biological effects,” says Dr Minger. “It’s not that
surprising when you look at the fact that Taxol, a cancer treatment,
originally came from yew, and aspirin from willow. Assuming that this
project works, TCM could represent a whole new class of drugs that no one
has had access to before.”
He believes that there is a pressing need for new Alzheimer’s treatments. “It
is such a huge healthcare burden; it’s projected to bankrupt most Western
countries in the next 50 years. There are almost no therapies and the
existing ones work only on a subset of people. Plus, in most cases, they
only slightly slow the progression of the disease.”
Rebecca Wood, the chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, agrees
that looking for potential cures in Chinese medicine could open up new
avenues of treatment. “It’s always worth looking at the unusual. We
shouldn’t assume we’ve got all the answers here. Just because something is
traditional doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have active compounds in it.”
In fact, experts estimate that one in four prescription medications used in
the UK was originally developed from plants. Dr Paul Francis, a
neuroscientist at King’s College London and one of the Alzheimer’s
researchers who will join Dr Minger in China, points out that even some of
the conventional Alzheimer’s medications prescribed in the UK started off as
shrubs.
“If you look at the three drugs currently available, one of them came from
daffodils and snowdrops,” he says. Further, many current conventional
treatments are based on Chinese herbal remedies (see panel, right),
including a possible treatment for dementia.
In recent years the Chinese Government has invested huge sums into
investigating whether its vast library of traditional remedies can be
converted into orthodox treatments.
“The Chinese are very committed to this,” says Dr Minger. “They have state-run
labs that are doing nothing except investigate TCM.”
But developing conventional drugs from these ancient cures is not an easy
process as a single remedy can contain many different plant ingredients. How
do you know which one is responsible for the curative effect, and is this
effect due to one ingredient or a combination?
The process starts with scientists identifying a remedy that they think may
have therapeutic potential. Using modern technology – and working by a
process of elimination – they test each fraction of the remedy for
biological activity, discarding the pieces that have no effect. They
continue until they have sieved the remedy down to a point where only a few
chemical constituents remain, which they deduce must be the ones that elicit
the therapeutic effect. Artificial copies of the active chemical are then
made and tested on patients in clinical trials.
But why can’t they just give patients the traditional remedies in their native
form? Because, Dr Francis says, they are not guaranteed to have any
medicinal effect, and, more importantly, they may be dangerous.
Barrage of safety tests are needed
No two traditional remedies are the same, he says, unlike a pharmaceutical
treatment where each pill has an identical composition. The remedies also
need to undergo conventional scientific testing to make sure that they won’t
interact with other medication. This involves a barrage of safety tests,
test-tube studies and, eventually, trials in patients. “Any chemical, even a
natural chemical, can have side-effects,” says Dr Francis.
Dr Minger, who believes that East-West scientific collaborations are the way
forward for UK researchers, says that he may also use it to investigate
whether TCM holds any potential treatments for cancer.
“China is going like gang-busters, particularly if you’re thinking in terms of
medicine and pharmaceuticals. In many cases their labs are as good, if not
better, than labs here or in the US. A lot of Chinese scientists also are
moving back. When you ask them why, they say it’s too good a place not to be
right now.”
Does Dr Minger anticipate any culture clashes? “Most of the Chinese guys are
Western-trained so it’s not that difficult to work together,” he says. Plus,
much of their science is regulated to the same level as UK science. The only
potential problem he sees is the traffic. “It takes for ever to get
anywhere. When you’re scheduling something, you have to pack in so much
extra time to get from one place to another.” And he has learnt from the
green goo incident how important it is to have no preconceptions. “I think
it just takes a little bit of open-mindedness.”
Chinese healing Drugs based on traditional medicine can help these
conditions
Malaria The antimalarial drug artesunate, derived from sweet wormwood
plant, is used worldwide.
Cancer Researchers from the University of Texas are testing toad venom
to see whether it can treat cancer.
Healthy heart Hawthorn, a remedy traditionally used to treat nausea,
may help patients with chronic heart failure.
Diabetes Animal studies have indicated that the herb angelica can help.
Stroke A treatment based on red sage is under trial in Singapore.
Timely reminders
18 million people suffer from Alzheimer’s disease worldwide. This
figure is projected to double by 2025
One in 20 people over the age of 65 in the UK has Alzheimer’s, rising
to nearly one in two by the age of 85
£17 billion is the annual cost of dementia to the UK economy
1.9 million people over the age of 65 in China have Alzheimer’s
Source: World Health Organisation; NHS; Alzheimer's Society;
Neuroepidemiology; CIA
