Internationally Renowned Scientists Who Will Be Presenting At The Inaugural Forum of the King’s Centre for Integrative Chinese Medicine Initiative

Title: The convergence of conventional Western medicine and experience-based East medicine—WE Medicine, for unmet health needs.

Abstract: The chronic disease and aging-associated symptoms including metabolic disease, neurodegeneration cancer, etc. are still major health issues around the world. Given the complexity and heterogeneity of those symptoms or diseases the reductionist approach by targeting on one target evolved from the 17th century in the West will no longer be sufficient to come up with effective management of those diseases and symptoms. The human experience based evolved Eastern medicine evolved through thousands of years exemplified by Traditional Chinese Medicine or Ayurveda Medicine could be effective for management those complicated health conditions and can be advanced with modern technologies. It has its own concept and solution by taking a holistic and system biology-oriented approach. Many of their concepts are consistent with advanced current Western medicine such as early detection for prevention and slow down progression of the disease, individualization of the treatment, combination of different modality, targeting different tissues, etc. disease treatment. From a therapeutic point of view, consideration to utilize the knowledge from both western (W) conventional reduction paradigm approach and experience, system biology approach based eastern (E) medicine should facilitate the advancement of future medicine (WE) in treating unmet clinic needs including therapeutic treatment, preventative measurement, improving quality of life, adjuvant therapy etc.

Prof. Cheng is a renowned scientist who has made major contributions to the development of drugs for cancer and viral diseases. Since 2003, Prof. Cheng has served as Chairman of the Consortium for the Globalization of Chinese Medicine (CGCM), a global, non-profit, non-discriminatory and non-political organization, with a mission of advancing the field of Chinese herbal medicine to benefit humankind through joint efforts of the academic institutions, industries and regulatory agencies around the world. CGCM currently has 162 academic institutional members and 26 industrial affiliate members worldwide. Prof. Cheng’s laboratory developed the “Phytomics QC” technology for quality control of botanicals, a platform recognized by the US FDA as a key technology for quality control of botanical drugs. The Cheng laboratory has also systematically explored a modernised classical formula as an adjuvant therapy for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and demonstrated the multiple mechanisms of action and multiple active compounds involved in each action of the four-herb product¹. Prof. Cheng also led three Phase I/II clinical studies of the product in combination with chemotherapy for three different types of cancer in the US and demonstrated its potential value in those clinical studies².

Title of invited talk: Statistical Insights for High Impact Clinical Research Publications

Abstract: This talk discusses the 10-key features of high-quality clinical paper:

• Well-designed study
• Objective measurements of outcomes and exposures
• Sound methodology
• Minimised potential bias
• Well-controlled confounding factors
• Sufficiently powered
• Correct result interpretation
• Clarity in tables and figures
• Following the reporting guidelines
• Robust conclusions

The talk explains these points using many published examples including those on Chinese traditional medicine³. The talk would be interesting to those who want to learn how to design, analyse, and publish a clinical study in high impact journals, and how to appreciate critically a clinical report.

Dr Duolao Wang is Professor and Chair in Biostatistics, Head of Biostatistics Unit, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, UK. He is a statistical reviewer to the Lancet and its specialty journals and an associate editor to the Journal of Biopharmaceutical Statistics. His research interests focus on the following areas: medical statistics, clinical trials, clinical epidemiology, and global health. He has published over 380 peer-reviewed papers on various diseases such as cardiovascular disease, infectious disease, respiratory disease, HIV, diabetes,  mental health, maternal and child health, nursing care, drug development and translation research in the international journals including 8 in NEJM, 9 in Lancet and 6 in Lancet specialty journals, 8 in JAMA, which have been cited over 43000 times with H-index of 75. His methodological interests include big data, machine learning, Bayesian analysis, multilevel modelling, and non-parametric regression. The win ratio method proposed by him and his colleagues has been used in many trial reports published in NEJM, The Lancet and JAMA, and recommended by FDA for the analysis of composite endpoints. He is the author of the book “Clinical Trials: A Practical Guide to Design, Analysis and Reporting”.

Title of invited talk: Traditional Chinese Medicine for Cardiovascular Diseases Treatment: From Case Report to Evidence-based Therapeutic Approach.

Abstract: Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are major disease burdens with high mortality worldwide. Early prediction of cardiovascular events can reduce the incidence of acute myocardial infarction and heart failure, and decrease the mortality rates of patients with CVDs. The pathological mechanisms and multiple factors involved in CVDs are complex; thus, traditional data analysis is insufficient and inefficient to manage multidimensional data for the risk prediction of CVDs and heart attacks, medical image interpretations, therapeutic decision-making, and disease prognosis prediction and outcome evaluation.

TCM offers unique theoretical and practical applications in the diagnosis and treatment of CVDs for centuries in China. TCM formulae contain multiple herbal items. Elucidating the complicated interactions between the active compounds and network modulations requires advanced data-analysis capability. Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) technology has allowed these challenges to be resolved, facilitating the understanding of the therapeutic principles of TCM. Herein, I will briefly introduce the application of AI and machine learning (ML) technology with clinical trials for evaluating TCM approaches in diagnosis and treatment of CVDs, we used AI technology for the studies on TCM pulse diagnosis involved 227 health subjects. With a multiple center clinical trial involved 661 chronic heart failure patients with HFrEF with NT-proBNP levels of ≥450 pg ml^-1 and left ventricular ejection fraction of ≤40% from 25 hospitals, we evaluated the feasibility of a TCM expert consensus for diagnosis and treatment of chronic heart failure and developed a TCM Syndrome Diagnosis Questionnaire for Heart Failure (SDQHF). Finally, we performed a multiple center randomized placebo control clinical trial involved 133 hospitals and enrolled 3,110 patients to evaluate a patented TCM product Qiliqiangxin (QLQX). The trial met its primary outcome, which was a composite of hospitalization for heart failure and cardiovascular death: over a median follow-up of 18.3 months, the primary outcome occurred in 389 patients (25.02%) in the QLQX group and 467 patients (30.03%) in the placebo group (hazard ratio (HR), 0.78; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.68-0.90; P < 0.001). In an analysis of secondary outcomes, the QLQX group showed reductions in both hospitalization for heart failure and cardiovascular death over the placebo group. The results of this trial indicate that QLQX may improve clinical outcomes in patients with HFrEF⁴.  In conclusion, advance scientific approaches with high standard evaluation creates opportunity to promote synergy between western medicine and TCM for the diagnosis and treatment of CVDs.

Dr. Jiangang Shen is Professor of School of Chinese Medicine, University of Hong Kong, Chairman of Department Research Postgraduate Committee, and Professor of State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. He also holds many appointments related to Research and Management of Chinese Medicine in the Hong Kong SAR and Council Members for international academic societies. He serves as panel members form the major government funds in Hong Kong SAR including Research Projects Assessment Panel, Innovation and Technology Commission, Biology and Medicine Panel, University Grants Committee, and, Grant Review Board, Health and Medical Research Fund (HMRF), etc. He has been appointed as Associate editors for many prestigious academic journals including Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, Frontiers of Pharmacology, World Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine, BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies., etc. He has published over 190 SCI papers in internationally renowned academic journals including Nature Medicine, Advanced Science, Nature Communication, Hepatology, Redox Biology, Journal of Advanced Research, Cardiovascular Research, Pharmacological Research, Journal of American Chemical Society, Journal of Neuroinflammation, Free Radical Biology and Medicine, etc.. He has also published more than 60 papers in Chinese core academic journals, and authored or co-authored 20 books in prestigious international and domestic publication houses, and filed 15 international and Chinese patents. His research has won many national and regional science and technology awards. He has been listed as one of the world’s top 1% Clarivate highly cited scientists for 6 consecutive years (2019-2024). He has extensive clinical experience in treating cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases with TCM.