Introduction
In pursuit of advancing the field of Chinese medicine to benefit humankind, a one-and-half day (14th -15th, December 2003) meeting was organized by the Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong. The meeting was attended by representatives of sixteen leading institutions in traditional Chinese Medicine and chaired by Prof Tommy Yung-chi Cheng, Henry Bronson Professor of Pharmacology, Yale University School of Medicine, USA. During the meeting, a Memorandum of Understanding has been signed by 16 prominent HK local and overseas institutions to form the "Consortium for Globalization of Chinese Medicine (CGCM)". The current CGCM membership has 162 academic institutional members and 26 industrial affiliate members.
The Consortium aims at bringing together industrial and regulatory agencies under an academic collaboration arrangement focusing on several areas by having Working Groups:
- Quality Control of herbal product
- Herbal and Nature product resources, cultivation
- Mechanism and toxicity study of polychemical medicine
- Mechanism and toxicity of Natural product
- Omics technology and AI analysis
- Preventative and Functional medicine
- Acupuncture and physical treatment
- Clinical Study
- Collaboration among academic, regulatory agency and industry
- Education and Intellectual Properties
CGCM will be positioned as a global, non-profit, non-discriminatory and non-political organization, with a mission of advancing the field of Chinese herbal medicine to benefit human kind through joint efforts of the academic institutions, industries and regulatory agencies around the world, by achieving our goals.