R &  D
Company Strategies

The growing interest in “Natural Medicine” is justified by many health benefits seen in traditional herbal medicine uses, and also
by the recognition of the scientific community that the plant genome offers exciting opportunities for discovery in today’s new
therapeutic agents.  Recently, FDA released regulations of the Dietary Supplement Act which allows for greater flexibility in
making claims for medicinal plant products.  

In responding to the growing consumer interest in “Alternative Medicine” and new FDA regulations, NPI is dedicated to the
development of ‘natural medicine” or “prescription botanicals” selected from traditional Chinese medicine based on its proven
clinical efficacy.  NPI believes that this ethnobotany based approach coupled with modern drug screening capabilities and
sophisticated analytical technologies offers the best chance not only to discover new drug candidates derived from natural
products but also to develop scientifically evidenced alternative herbal therapies to meet the healthcare challenge of the 21st
century. The natural medicine developed at NPI will be marketed under its own brand name as the best quality controlled and
scientifically studied natural remedies.


Discovery of New Drug Candidates from Herbal Medicines

NPI is a high-tech drug discovery and development company located in Burlington, Massachusetts. In the past 15 years, NPI has
established strong collaborations with several prominent universities and research institutions in the United States and in China
and has successfully produced several drug candidates by screening medicinal plants used in China for millennia.  For
instance, NPI-BC-4-1, a potent topoisomerase I inhibitor and cell differentiation inducer, was isolated and identified as a
potential anti-cancer agent for prostate and brain tumors. This anticancer activity has been verified by the National Cancer
Institute (NCI) in its human tumor cell line panels and by a clinical trial in Germany.   Recent work on the development of an
herbal suppressor of alcohol drinking resulted in the discovery of NPI-031G as a potential anti-craving agent for the treatment of
alcoholism, a major social and health problem in the U.S. and around the world.  NPI-031G showed higher efficacy than
naltrexone in high alcohol drinking rats and monkeys.  Naltrexone is the only drug approved by the FDA for the treatment of
alcoholism in the U.S. Acceptance by patients has been poor because of the potential for liver damage.

Development of Natural Remedies

Parallel to its activities in the discovery of potential new drug candidates from traditional herbal medicines, NPI is also
dedicated to the development of “natural remedies” called “botanicals” by the FDA, into prescription medicines. NPI has several
natural remedies on the market. The first product, called “Hui-Chun,” is derived from a traditional Chinese anti-aging medicine.  
Two other products are based on DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) derived from deep-sea fish.  DHA is an essential nutritional
component for optimum brain and eye function and is good for the circulatory system.  In addition to its DHA product for adults,
NPI developed a unique refined DHA nutritional supplement for infants and children that is free from fish odor. This pediatric
DHA product was approved by the equivalent of the FDA in China and is being actively marketed in Beijing, China. Because of
China’s one-child policy and its huge population, this product has great commercial potential. Recently, NPI obtained one
additional natural remedy (kazoom: liver protection ) approved by China FDA.