American Chinese Pharmaceutical
Association Newsletter
Editor: James W. Shaw, Pharm.D., M.S.
July, 2000
Shiew-Mei Huang, Ph.D.
Thanks to the superb efforts of the standing committee chairs and members (Program, Finance, Communications, Scholarship, etc.), the past months have seen much progress in achieving our goals for 2000.
The June Eastern Regional Symposium, held in Skillman, NJ, was a successful event. Individuals from diverse backgrounds discussed key issues in modern drug discovery and development. The meeting was both informative and intellectually stimulating. It also attracted Chinese Americans belonging to various professional organizations to exchange scientific ideas and to further nurture future communications. There are other regional meetings being planned by our local members. This year's annual meeting will be on October 29, the day when the annual International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics (ISSX) and AAPS meetings overlap. We hope that members and their friends attending ISSX or AAPS will come to this Sunday event. Please see the Program Committee report for more details.
The Finance Committee has done an excellent job with regard to fundraising. The Committee's success has provided continued support for our local and international meetings. In addition, it has enabled us to provide scholarships to pharmacy students (see the Scholarship Committee report) and graduate students (the application and evaluation guideline is being developed by the Scholarship Committee). The Communications Committee has given the ACPA website a facelift. Our website is now being revised to provide useful links to various key sites and to allow for rapid meeting/conference updates. The Committee is evaluating the future possibility of on-line registration for ACPA meetings and symposia. Marina Chang, our president-elect, has graciously assumed the position as chairperson for the Membership Committee. She and Chester Lau will be initiating various membership drives.
Overall, I am pleased with the report cards various committees have turned in for the first half of this year. We will continue to serve our members' needs. At our quarterly meeting of the executive and standing committee chairs in May, we discussed issuing a new membership directory and providing information on career opportunities through advertisements in our newsletter, directory, and website. We will continue to address issues pertaining to the long-term infrastructure of this organization and work toward facilitating liaisons with other professional organizations. We welcome further suggestions. Please e-mail me (huangs@cder.fda.gov) or one of the other executive committee members or standing committee chairs before our next quarterly meeting, which is scheduled for September.
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Marina Chang, R.Ph.
ACPA and GEA-National University of Singapore will be co-organizing the 5th International Conference, which is to be held in Singapore on May 28-30, 2001. The theme of this conference is "Bringing Asian Herbal and Traditional Medicines to the Modern Mainstream Pharmaceutical World." The preliminary program is outlined below:
1. How to Apply Modern Pharmaceutical Technology to Asian Herbal and Traditional Medicines
2. Advances of Asian Herbal and Traditional Medicines: What Do They Mean to the Modern Pharmaceutical World?
3. Regulatory Requirements in Bridging Asian Herbal and Traditional Medicines to the Modern Pharmaceutical World
4. Business Opportunities in Bridging Asian Herbal and Traditional Medicines to the Modern Pharmaceutical World
There will also be a series of post-conference workshops, including the following:
1. Intellectual Properties and Pharmaceutical Licensing
2. cGMP in Asian Herbal and Traditional Medicines Development and Manufacturing
3. How to Form Partnerships between Asian and US Pharmaceutical Companies.
4. International Pharmaceutical Business Essentials
Also, at this time the Program Committee is calling for papers to be presented at the meeting. The deadline for submission is January 2001.
For more information, please contact Paul Heng, Ph.D. at GEA-NUS Pharmaceutical Processing Research Laboratory, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260 (Phone: (65) 772-2930, E-mail: phapaulh@nus.edu.org) or Keith Chan, Ph.D. at GloboMax LLC, 7250 Parkway Drive, Suite 430, Hanover, MD 21076, USA (Phone: (410) 712-9500, E-mail: chank@globomax.com).
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Y. W. Francis Lam, Pharm.D., FASCP
Thanks to the effort of Grace and Sam Chan, ACPA is revamping its website. The address is http://www.ACPA-Pharm.org. We are still in the process of improving the design, as well as uploading current information. I would encourage all members to go to the website and take a tour. You may e-mail comments and information that you would like to have posted on the website to me at lamf@uthscsa.edu.
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S. Peter King, Ph.D.
Our fundraising efforts for 2000 have so far been very successful. As of June 12, 2000, ACPA has received donations from Dr. Jane Hsiao of Ivax and from the following corporations: Andrx Pharmaceuticals, Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), MDS Pharma, Perkin-Elmer, Wyeth-Ayerst Research, and XenoBiotic Laboratories. Kudos to the Finance Committee members - including Drs. Jane Hsiao, S. Peter King, Tony Yu, and Diana Wu, as well as Dr. Jinn Wu - for their tremendous accomplishments in fundraising this year. Our fundraising efforts are ongoing, and any support from ACPA members would be greatly appreciated. If you have any suggestions for fundraising events or would like to help ACPA solicit a donation, please e-mail S. Peter King (kingsp@war.wyeth.com).
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Wen-Hwei (Wendy) Chou, Pharm.D., Ph.D.
The deadline for nominating the 2000 president-elect is August 1, 2000. The Nomination Committee encourages members to forward their nomination to Wen-Hwei (Wendy) Chou at FDA/CDER/OCPB, HFD-860, 1451 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852. Self-nominations are welcome.
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Marina Chang, R.Ph.
ACPA is requesting suggestions to increase membership and is asking any member who wishes to organize a membership drive to submit a proposal to Marina Chang, R.Ph., President-Elect, 18525 Azalea Drive, Derwood, MD 20855 (e-mail: changm@cder.fda.gov).
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Jinn Wu, Ph.D.
The ACPA East Coast Regional Symposium was held on June 10, 2000 at Johnson & Johnson (J & J) Consumer Products Worldwide in Skillman, NJ. Thanks to Jonas Wang, vice president at J & J, for his generous support and coordination. Thanks are also due to the following ACPA members: Marina Chang, Chester Lau, S. Peter King, and Diana Wu.
A total 53 individuals attended the symposium. The program focused on modern concepts in drug discovery and development and was divided into morning and afternoon sessions as outlined below:
Morning session (Jonas Wang, moderator): Opening remarks (Jinn Wu), International Harmonization of Pharmaceutical Development (Shiew-Mei Huang, FDA), High Throughput Medicinal Chemistry: Current Status and Future Perspectives (Li Chen, Hoffman-La Roche), In-Vitro/In-Vivo Correlation: From Automated In-Vitro Caco-2 Absorption Screening to In-Vivo Bioavailability Determination for Improved Drug Selection (Kin-Kai Hwang, Aventis), Drug-Drug Interaction Issues with New Therapeutical Agents (Helen Shen, DuPont), and Case Report: New Analgesics Development in Pain Control (Kwen-Jen Chang, Delta Pharmaceuticals).
Afternoon session (Wen-Chyi Shyu, moderator): Clinical Trial Bridging Studies (Wei-Chi Liao, BMS), 50+ Population Health Problems and Product Development Opportunities (Jonas Wang, J & J), New Challenges in Formulation Development: SR Parenterals (Tony Yu, BMS), Application of Modern LC/MS/MS Instrumentation and Techniques in Drug Discovery and Development (Jinn Wu, XenoBiotic Laboratories), and panel discussion (Shiew-Mei Huang, FDA and Wen-Chyi Shyu, BMS, moderators).
Twenty-nine people attended a dinner banquet that followed the meeting. The program was well received by the participants. Shiew-Mei Huang asked that participants forward further suggestions/comments to Jinn Wu via e-mail. At the meeting, there were discussions on possible future alliances with other professional organizations, such as the Society of Chinese Bioscientists in America (SCBA) and the Sino-American Pharmaceutical Professionals Association (SAPA). Comments from members are welcome.
We would also like to announce the upcoming ACPA Annual Meeting, which will be held during the ISSX/AAPS meetings. It is scheduled for Sunday, October 29 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis, IN. Please submit your suggestions for a meeting theme or topics to Jinn Wu (jwu@xbl.com or huangs@cder.fda.gov) by the end of July.
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Veronica S. L. Young, Pharm.D.
The Scholarship Committee reviewed all applications submitted for the ACPA 1999-2000 Scholarship Competition. This year, there were 31 commendable applicants from the United States and Canada. The final decision was difficult, but two very outstanding pharmacy students have been selected to be the recipients of our $1000 scholarships. They are Wei-Chung Chaung and Grace Lee. Wei-Chung is a first-year pharmacy student in the professional curriculum at The University of Texas at Austin. Grace is a third-year pharmacy student in the professional curriculum at University of California, San Francisco. Congratulations to our two winners! We encourage all pharmacy students of Chinese heritage to watch for the announcement of the next Scholarship Competition, which will begin in Fall 2000.
A special note of appreciation goes to the Scholarship Committee members for taking the time to help with the extensive review process. These members are Drs. Mary Ensom, Alan Lau, Kenneth Lem, and Anne Lin. Thanks for all the hard work!
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Ming Hu, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Department of Pharmanceutical Sciences
Washington State University
There are many categories of alternative medical practices. According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), any medical practice that deviates from standard Western medicine can be classified as alternative. NCCAM groups alternative practices into five major categories: (1) alternative medical systems, (2) mind-body interventions, (3) biologically based treatments, (4) manipulative and body-based methods, and (5) energy therapies (see NCCAM website at http://nccam.nih.gov/nccam/fcp/classify). It has been estimated that more than $10 billion is spent each year on alternative medicine, of which $4 billion is spent on herbal preparations. This segment is growing at an annual rate of more than 20%. As many of ACPA's members already know, herbal preparations are a major source of revenue for the retail pharmacy industry.
Due to a high degree of bias in the biomedical community, alternative medicine has not received much attention and has been effectively marginalized in the US. However, that has not stopped millions of Americans from using alternative therapies to improve their health. To correct for the apparent imbalance between consumer use and research, Congress provided the National Institutes of Health (NIH) $50 million (for fiscal year 1999) to establish NCCAM, in spite of the fact that NIH did not request this funding. The funding level for the present fiscal year is $69 million (a 38% increase and the highest increase among the NIH components).
NCCAM is currently conducting several high-profile clinical trials (often in conjunction with other NIH institutes), including studies of the use of St. John's Wort to treat mild depression and Ginkgo biloba to treat mild dementia. The emphasis of these trials is to test herbal preparations in the same way that Western medicines are tested. These studies are often large and complicated multi-center trials and, thus, require considerable resources. For example, the proposed clinical trials of Ginkgo biloba will last three years and cost $15 million. NCCAM is spending a great deal of resources to establish centers of excellence to study herbal preparations. It has also funded a number of grants to improve the quantity of data available.
It is not difficult to predict that so-called alternative medical practices will soon be brought into the modern age of evidence-based medicine. With the funding of many high-caliber scientific studies, one can expect to see many positive and wonderful results in the coming decades. Alternative medicine will become a branch of mainstream medical practice.
This article represents the first in a series on herbal preparations. In the coming articles, I will discuss individual herbal preparations and new developments within specific therapeutic areas. Those of you who desire immediate information may refer to NCCAM's data clearinghouse, which may be found at the Internet address given above.
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