Facilities and Equipment
The laboratory occupies an area of 3,000 square ft. and is subdivided into 10 functional units as follows:
Chinese Medicine Extraction Unit
In Chinese Medicine Extraction Unit, a variety of bioactive chemical compounds are extracted and purified depending on chemical properties through solvent extraction, concentration or lyophilization, with the aids of rotary evaporators and freeze dryer.
Teaching Unit
Both the experiment of undergraduate and part-time postgraduate students are conducted at the Teaching Unit, where is equipped with eight sets of four channel bio-physiological signal recording systems used for ECG monitoring and blood pressure and muscle contraction measurements.
Chinese Medicine Analytical Unit
Interactive applications of spectrometric (UV-visible, FT-IR, Fluorescence, Atomic absorption and Mass spectrometry) and chromatographic (TLC, LC, HPLC and GC) analyses on bioactive constituents found in Chinese medicine are used in the Chinese Medicine Analytical Unit for qualitative and quantitative determination of Chinese medicine.
Physiological Unit
A variety of in vitro pharmacological and physiological studies on the Chinese medicine efficacy of organ perfusion or tissue incubation can be carried out in the Physiological Unit, where they are synergistically combined and paralleled with the research findings harvested from cell culture or animal model in vitro experiments.
Tissue & Cell Culture Unit
Over 15 well-established mammalian cell lines are routinely maintained for the purpose of satisfying different cellular restraints specified and required by the various kinds of Chinese medicine modulated biomedical investigations.
Histological Unit
Histological studies on pathological relief after Chinese medicine treatments of animal tissues can be carried out by routinely H&E staining and application of Immunohistochemistry (IHC) or fluorescence in situ hybridization technology (FISH).
DNA Analytical Unit
CM stimulated up- or down-regulation of gene expression can be analyzed by conducting a series of experiments ranging from RT-PCR, Real-time PCR and DNA microarray for routine quantitative analysis of gene expression to high-throughout gene expression study.
Fluorescent Imaging Unit
A robust and sophisticated fluorescence imaging system empowered with a fully automatic wavelength selecting disc, computerized image focusing control and imaging capture system is used for various research studies such as investigation of the Chinese medicine modulated cellular proliferative, mitogenetic and apoptotic signaling pathways.
Protein Analytical Unit
During the transitional period of post-genomic and proteomic era, attempts to a successful extraction and purify native proteins can be repeatedly carried out by our state-of-the-art AKTAexplorer Fast Protein Liquid Chromatography System. It is powered with several sets of computer-controlled sampling and column eluting valves to allow large-scale of herbal or recombinant protein isolation and purification that is multi-dimensionally interlaced with technologies comprising ion-exchange chromatography, size-exclusion and hydrophobic interaction.
Animal Operating Theatre
For an in vitro mechanistic investigation of Chinese medicine in the treatment of disease, a variety of animal models is developed for simulating the diseases of stroke, menopausal syndrome, depression obesity and liver cancer found in humans.