The history and achievements of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) from antiquity to today demonstrate an amazing combination of traditional culture and modern innovative methods of promotion. China recently proposed to integrate TCM with innovation by closely combining the sectors of medicine, industry, education, and research.
Beijing Tong Ren Tang Group has always been committed to seeking innovation in promoting the medical solutions of TCM. With the help of independent research and development, scientific research, and innovation, Tong Ren Tang has added impetus to the new development of the century-old brand and has blazed a unique path of innovative development.
Originally founded in 1669, the time-honored TCM brand Tong Ren Tang has been infused with new vitality in its modern development through innovation and restructuring.
Transformation and Upgrading
The group has promoted the overall expansion of its business, trying to cover the whole health care chain, and strives to build a “pharmacy plus” health industry pattern that centers around industrial pharmacy and is supported by commercial retail, health care, medical elderly services, and international pharmaceutical industry, providing people in the end with full life cycle health services.
Since 2019, Tong Ren Tang has expanded its business scope to combine medicine and nursing care, and launched its own elderly care brand named Cuihe Kangyang. It has actively explored online medical care and implemented e-commerce development strategies to build Digital Tong Ren Tang and promote the construction of chained, standardized, and smart retail pharmacies, thus creating a group of smart pharmacies that integrate online and offline development.
Maintaining Integrity and Innovation
Tong Ren Tang has attached great importance to research and development in recent years and gradually formed a scientific and technological innovation system that includes a research institute, a postdoctoral research station, and many research centers. Various studies have been carried out around the cultivation of high-quality varieties of TCM, the construction of a quality control system, and the cooperation of production, study, and research.
Tong Ren Tang since its beginning has carried out scientific research on classic famous prescriptions and medicines. Moreover, the group continues to promote process optimization and standard improvement and uses new technology and equipment to optimize the production flow of some well-known medicines. It also has revised the national subject “cold soft capsule standard,” and promoted the quality standards of a variety of medicines.
It is worth mentioning that, based on the existing pharmacodynamic research, Tong Ren Tang initiated the clinical efficacy and safety study of Tongren Wuji Baifeng Pills in the treatment of hyperuricemia. Its efficacy research has been extended from the treatment of hyperuricemia to the treatment of gout, thus laying the foundation for increasing indications for subsequent varieties.
In terms of new product research and development, the group has completed the development of 1,288 new products, obtained 95 health food certificates, and completed research on 600 kinds of TCM formula granules. Meanwhile, Tong Ren Tang has also garnered an array of awards. The approval of Yufeng Ningxin Tablets as an over-the-counter (OTC) drug makes Tong Ren Tang the first Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical company to obtain a botanical drug marketing license in the EU.
Promoting Intelligent Manufacturing
A new round of technological revolution represented by big data and intelligence is helping TCM move towards intelligent production. The liquid preparation project of Beijing Tong Ren Tang Technology Development’s Tangshan Company introduced China’s first domestic oral liquid full-automatic production line, realizing an automatic production including delivering cargo from storage, unpacking, transporting, bottle washing and drying, filling and sealing, sterilization light inspection, labeling, encasement, coding, and then storing the finished product. No manual operation is required throughout the entire process.
Meanwhile, Tong Ren Tang has carried out more than 10 technological innovations such as the automatic production technology of traditional big honey pills and the new energy-saving concentration technology of TCM. Among these inventions, the key technology innovation and industrial application of deep processing of feature marine food won the second prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award. Reliability engineering theory and key technology application of TCM production process control as well as key technologies and applications of safety evaluation of TCM injections and toxic TCM won the first prize of Beijing Science and Technology Award.
Going Global
The components of TCM are complex and greatly sensitive to factors such as place of origin, processing, and production of the medicinal materials. Therefore, as TCM products are making their way into markets around the world, the standardization system has become very important. In this regard, Tong Ren Tang has been committed to exploring the establishment of a standardized system of TCM.
Application for EU marketing authorization is mainly divided into two parts: registration & application and Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) inspection. There are thousands of inspection indicators for GMP certification. “What kind of knife is used to cut the medicine, what kind of water is used to wash the knife, how thick each part of the medicine is, and what kind of clothes do the operators wear, etc. There are many strict regulations,” recalled a staff involved in the certification.
Yufeng Ningxin Tablets are a Chinese patent medicine that is made from the TCM material kudzuvine root after it is extracted and processed. Due to its natural quality, wild kudzuvine root has become the first choice of Tong Ren Tang. However, the EU does not recognize wild medicinal materials at all, unless it can be proved that all its indicators meet the requirements. As a result, technicians collected wild kudzuvine root samples from more than a dozen provinces, and finally decided to select the wild kudzuvine root found in Zhenping County, Shaanxi Province. After being tested per hundreds of testing indexes and thousands of pages of operating instructions, the soil samples were proved to fully comply with EU standards. Starting from scratch, Tong Ren Tang has established a complete set of quality management systems for wild medicinal materials. Yufeng Ningxin Tablets finally passed the EU application for marketing authorization in 2019. As an important market for traditional herbal medicines, the EU has a great influence in the field of herbal registration. On the way to going global, Tong Ren Tang has shown its determination with its competitive edge to enter the Western mainstream market.
It is worth noting that in terms of raw material supply, Tong Ren Tang has its own production bases of authentic medicinal material, with a planting scale up to 1,900 hectares. Through standardized planting and scientific management, the quality of self-grown medicinal materials has been put under control.
Obviously, by sticking to high-quality development, relying on independent research and development, scientific research, and innovation, Tong Ren Tang, a more than 350-year-old TCM brand, is exuberant with new development vitality, especially as it accelerates overseas expansion.
