All structures need a solid foundation to build on and Dr. Adeboye Adejare, professor and chair of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Dr. Bin Chen, assistant professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, feel such a foundation was recently cemented with Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine.
As invited lecturers, Drs. Adejare Chen spent a week at one of China’s most respected academic institutions to help set up a collaborative partnership.
“We wanted to try to explore the opportunity for future collaboration in education and research,” Dr. Chen explained. “We’ve already started it in research. And hopefully, we are able to get some of their graduates to come here to pursue advanced degrees.”
Front row from left: Professor Ying Lu, director of Lab of Pharmacology & Toxicology at the Research Institute; Dr. Adeboye Adejare; Dr. Bin Chen; Professor Huiming Bian, director of Lab of Cardiovascular Pharmacology at the Research Institute. Second row from left: Mr. Qiang Sheng, general secretary at the Research Institute; Associate Professor Wenbing Shang, director of Lab of Endocrine Pharmacology at School of Medicine; Professor Weifeng Guo, vice-director of Research Institute; Associate Professor Long Chen, director of National Lab of Pharmacology at NJUCM; Professor Shizhong Zheng, associate director of Pharmacology & Toxicology at the Research Institute.
The genesis of the trip started a year ago when a delegation from Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine (
http://www.nju.edu.cn/cps/site/njueweb/fg/index.php) led by university president Dr. Wu Mianhua visited the
U.S. The
Nanjing group made stops at
Stanford University,
Harvard University, and Merck & Co., Inc., and thanks to Dr. Chen, at University of the Sciences.
Dr. Chen received his BS in pharmacy in 1992 and an MS in pharmacology in 1995 from Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine. He also worked there for three years as a lecturer before departing in 1998 to earn his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Catholic University Leuven (Belgium). He maintained ties to his alma mater which resulted in the delegation coming to campus.
Not long after the visit, Dr. Adejare was extended an invitation to serve as a visiting lecturer along with Dr. Chen.
The two researchers made their way to the city of Nanjing in the southeast portion of China on October 7. Nanjing, which means Southern capital, is the ancient capital city of China and was the seat of power for six dynasties. The school which draws its name from the city was established in 1902, and now boasts 21 schools with 12,655 undergraduate as well as 11,030 graduate students. It is spread across three campuses, including its newest, Xianlin Campus which opened in September 2008.
Dr. Chen, whose focus is on cancer research, presented “Photodynamic Vascular Targeting Therapy” in his native language. This was his second visit in 10 years, the first about two years ago, and he was surprised how quickly the new campus went from a construction site to a bustling academic location in that short time.
When it was Dr. Adejare’s turn, he opened his talk on “Navigating Chemical Space for Medicine: A Case Study in CNS Drug Discovery” with the traditional Chinese greeting ‘ni hao.’
“Of course, my Chinese is not that good,” Dr. Adejare laughed. “So after saying ‘ni hao,’ I told the audience that was all they were getting. But Bin was there to translate for me. It was a nice three-hour lecture.”
In addition, the two dined twice with the university’s president and had numerous interactions with top officials including Dr. Anwei Ding, dean of School of Pharmacy, Dr. Hao Wu, director of Research Institute and Dr. Guicheng Huang, director of Department of International Cooperation & Exchange. While an exchange of students or faculty can be arranged, one immediate consequence that has already been set in motion is the exchange of research.
“We hope to use our technology to do some joint research with their labs because they have their own drugs in the process of development, but they don’t have the technology that we have here,” Dr. Chen explained. “One option would be to use our instrument facility to help them do some of their work and have a joint paper/grant submission.”
Whatever the outcome the mutual visits have opened some doors.
“We are hoping that there will be people from there looking to come here for short-term type visits and vice versa,” Dr. Adejare said. “For example, we can easily accommodate a USP student who wishes to do a rotation or research in traditional Chinese medicine or who wishes to do a study abroad type program in China. The same applies to other members of the USP family.”