Master Program in Pharmacognosy and Traditional Chinese Medicine

The master program of Pharmacognosy and TCM was declared in 2000 by a joint team of the School of Medicine, Jiangsu University and Jiangsu Provincial Institution of Chinese Medicine. The program focus on the following research work:

I. Study on material foundation and pharmacological mechanism of natural products on molecular level. Modern separating technologies and screening platform of different levels are employed to separate and prepare active part/components of kinds of natural medicines (crude extract/TCM) in an activity-directed way.

II. Evaluating the quality of natural products (crude extract/ TCM) and utilizing medicinal resources. Technologies are employed with up to date scientific theories in work on TCM. We are working on setting standards about Chinese medicines and planting of Chinese medicines. It is being done on cataloging Chinese medicine, looking for new plants to provide medicine ingredient. We have built our fame in renovating medicinal plants in danger of extinction and rare medicinal plants to prevent its loss, degradation and extinction, which is advantageous for sustainable utilization of chinese medicine resources and sustainable development of TCM Industry.

III. ADME-directed study on the new dosage form and preparations of TCM. On the basis of inheritance and development of the advantages and characteristics of TCM theory and according to the key problem of factors affecting the development of TCM preparation, we adopt the latest achievements of Pharmaceutics, Biomedical, Material Science, Food Science and Chemistry, and mainly focus on the study of new forms of Chinese medicines (Microparticle Drug Delivery System, design modern preparation based on ADME characteristics of herbs) and secondary development of Chinese Herbal Medicine Compound Preparation.

In recent years, over thirty research projects have been granted by different funds, including National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program), National Natural Science Foundation of China, Provincial Key Technologies R&D Program of Jiangsu, Provincial Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu, etc. Hundreds of papers have been published in research in this discipline. The subject inherits the enterprising spirits of Jiangsu University to develop continuously.