Modern science meets ancient Chinese herbs: Richmond company touts 'game-changer' medicine for the flu
BY DAN FUMANO, THE PROVINCE NOVEMBER 8, 2015
From a nondescript grey building in a commercial park near the Fraser River, a Richmond company is making a bold claim with a new product they say could be a “game-changer” in an age-old problem: fighting the common cold and flu.
From a nondescript grey building in a commercial park near the Fraser River, a Richmond company is making a bold claim with a new product they say could be a “game-changer” in an age-old problem: fighting the common cold and flu.
The new remedy is just one recent example of Canada’s multi-billion-dollar natural health industry, as modern science meets ancient Chinese herbs.
Many of these products, such as the new cold and flu formula developed in Richmond, combine millenniums-old Asian traditions with state-of-the art Canadian technology, said Dr. Yuan-Chun Ma, president of Richmond-based Canadian Phytopharmaceuticals Corporation (CPC).
CPC’s product is a blend of three Chinese herbs that have been used for their health properties for thousands of years, Ma said.
It’s a new version of a formula known as SHL (or Shuanghuanglian), which has been widely used in China for decades, including in hospital settings, said Ma.
But CPC’s product, sold as an oral solution and marketed as Defeat, is the first version of the formula licensed by Health Canada.
The traditional formula will soon be widely available on Canadian shelves for the first time, Ma said, hopefully in time for this year’s cold and flu season.
John Danylowich, whose company Nuumara worked for years with CPC on the development and marketing of Defeat, said the product could be a “game-changer” in fighting the cold and flu.
“It slows or stops the replication of the virus, and it’s non-specific, so it doesn’t matter whether it’s an A or B influenza, or whatever the seasonal strain is at the time,” said Danylowich.
In addition to the Canadian market, Nuumara recently obtained a licence from the Indian government to export products to India, which Danylowich described as a “triumph.”
The natural health product and functional food industry is worth $11.3 billion, including a “great cluster” in B.C., said Dr. Bob Chapman, the Natural Health Products program leader for the National Research Council, the Canadian government’s research and development arm.
“In terms of activity, (B.C.) is punching above your per-capita weight, and I think that’s because of the culture,” said Chapman, who lived in Vancouver for six years, and received a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of B.C.
“The culture on the West Coast is much more about healthy living. And any advantage that you can get, including natural health products, I think that you guys are tuned into, educated about, and putting your dollar behind.”
The West Coast also provides access to Pacific Rim countries for the import of raw plants and materials and the export finished products to overseas markets, Chapman said, adding: “The Asian connection in B.C. is not lost.”
Although Traditional Chinese Medicines (TCM) and other natural health products have been used for thousands of years around the world, UBC neuroscientist Dr. William Jia said research on their real pharmacological benefits is “still extremely insufficient, which is the main reason that most of products in the natural products market are not well accepted by the mainstream.”
That’s why, Jia said, his group at UBC’s Brain Research Centre is “trying to use modern medical knowledge and techniques to investigate these products to understand biological activities of those herbal medicines and discover pharmacologically active ingredients for medicinal uses.”
Jia’s group at UBC, in collaboration with a research institution in Shanghai, has recently made exciting discoveries for natural health products that could improve brain health.
They have identified a compound from ginseng that could be “a natural alternative for current antidepressants, with similar efficacy but much lower side effects,” Jia said, adding the drug has already succeeded through the second of three phases of double-blinded, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trials.
The compound, Jia said, also has “a great neuroprotection property,” and results from animal studies have shown “significant cognitive enhancement effects, which suggests it has a potential to be developed to treat dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease.”
Jia said there is a trend in the Western world to use natural products, including TCM herbs as an alternatives to prescription drugs.
Despite a lack of funding for research that is needed, he said, “I believe, with time, products with high quality and strong scientific evidence for their health benefits will finally win and last in the market, which calls for investment from both government and industry to support such a transition for the benefit of consumers.”
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