By Cai Wenjun | October 23, 2014, Thursday

MORE than 30 billion yuan (US$4.9 billion) worth of Danshen products were sold annually in China, accounting for one third of the market for cardiovascular products.

A new drug with effective ingredients from Danshen, or saliva, developed by the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica under the Chinese Academy of Sciences saw 3.5 billion yuan in sales last year, local experts told the 28th International Symposium on the Chemistry of Natural Products in Shanghai yesterday, which was World Traditional Medicine Day.

Though there is a huge market for traditional Chinese medicine in China, it is not recognized in the West.

"It is important to transfer TCM from an experience-based medicine to an evidence-based medicine,” said Guo De’an from the Shanghai institute. "Quality control, safety, efficacy and mechanism are the key to industrialization and internationalization of TCM. We must build a TCM standard recognized internationally.”