umagazine issue 18 14 principal investigator, Prof Lee has high hopes for his product to enter the food and nutrition supplement market in Europe. So far, the team has been granted a number of patents for the PD-001 Molecule by authorities in the United States and mainland China. As a biotechnology company based in Portugal, TechnoPhage showed an interest in collaboration in the early stage of the project, Prof Lee notes. Now, the molecule is almost ready to be manufactured into a dietary supplement. ‘This project targets the European and Portuguesespeaking markets. TechnoPhage is more familiar with the European regulations on novel food and it is easier for them to bring our product there and apply for registration. There will be a huge market in European countries and in Brazil. The cooperation has been smooth and that is partly due to Macao’s role as a service platform between China and Portuguese-speaking countries,’ says Prof Lee. New Hope for Parkinson's Disease Second to Alzheimer’s disease in terms of prevalence, Parkinson’s disease is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. Currently, about 7 million people around the globe suffer from PD and over 2 million of them are Chinese. The motor symptoms from the disease are a result from the death of cells in the substantia nigra, a region of the midbrain. Generally coming on slowly over time, the symptoms include shaking, rigidity, slowness of movement, and difficulty with walking. However, there is no preventive or long-term effective treatment or health products available. It has taken Prof Lee’s team nine years to isolate the bioactive ingredient of PD-001 from Alpinia oxyphylla that could prevent and ameliorate the development of the disease. This finding is a joint effort of many cohorts of students and faculty members involved in the project. According to Prof Lee, the cause of Parkinson’s disease generally remains unknown and the key pathological change in the body is dopaminergic neuronal loss in the substantia nigra, resulting in insufficient dopamine generated for the motor system. He observes that current clinical treatments only relieve the symptoms of the disease. The team successfully extracts and isolates PD-001 – a small molecule with a novel structure from the fruit of Alpinia oxyphylla. From laboratory studies designed to determine the preventive and therapeutic effects of PD-001 on different animal models of PD, the team found that treatment with PD-001 can significantly reduce cellular damage in the dopaminergic neurons and can improve dyskinesia. ‘If things go smoothly, this project will be the first case of developing pure compound from traditional Chinese medicine as an international novel food ingredient. As to drug development, clinical trials will take longer time,’ says Prof Lee. Diagnostic Tool for Promoting Global Health The Ebola outbreak in West Africa claimed over 10,000 lives from 2013 to 2016. Probably, things would have been different if there had been an economical, fast and accurate virus detection tool available at the time. An in-vitro diagnostic (IVD) tool, an innovative medical product developed by another UM team can perform a rapid diagnostic test for infectious diseases by taking only a small specimen from the human body, such as blood, urine, sputum, or tissue. As the project investigator and the associate director (research) of UM’s State Key Laboratory of Analog and “益智素＂可有效挽救帕金森氏症模型引起的多巴胺神經元損傷 The bioactive ingredient of PD-001 from Alpinia oxyphylla can significantly reduce cellular damage in the dopaminergic neurons from animal models of PD
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