14 – 16 October 2018
Prof. Shaw, the Centre Director, was invited to give an oral presentation at the 6th International Symposium on Edible & Medicinal Plant Resources and the Bioactive Ingredients (ISEPR 2018) which was held on 14th to 16th October, 2018, in Nanjing, China. ISEPR 2018 was hosted by Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Shenzhen Research Institute of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The symposium focused on the recent research development of edible and medicinal plants, and associate closely with the national theme, “the Health Industry Development on the Belt and Road”.
Prof. Shaw gave a talk on the topic of ‘Molecular authentication of medicinal granules’. The conference abstract was as follow:
Yat-Tung Lo and Pang-Chui Shaw
LDS YYC R&D Centre for Chinese Medicine, Institute of Chinese Medicine and School of Life Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong, China
Concentrated Chinese medicine granule (CCMG) provides a convenient way for consuming Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). With an annual growth rate of 30%, CCMG is raising much interest and investment. Owing to the absence of morphological characteristics and the lack of specific chemical markers for animal CCMG, this type of products has posed challenges in quality control. This study aims to apply molecular techniques for effective authentication and quantification of CCMG. Species-specific amplicons with sizes less than 200 bp were successfully amplified in a number of animal and plant CCMG. Since amplification of full-length DNA barcode is usually not successful, we have modified an adaptor ligation-mediated PCR protocol, so that a single species-specific primer is used for the authentication of Angelica sinensis and Panax notoginseng CCMG. Using Whitmania pigra and Zaocys dhumnades CCMG as test cases, we have shown that the amount of a CCMG component in a mixture can be determined by quantitative PCR (qPCR). The above developed techniques will be beneficial to the regulatory authorities and manufacturers for the quality control of CCMG.
