Glorious History of ICCBS Collaboration with China in the Last Four Decades By: Prof. Dr. M. Iqbal Choudhary.

The journey of collaboration between the International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), University of Karachi, and Chinese academic and research institutions is as old as the institution itself. Prof. Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman used to go to Shanghai and meet with senior professors there in the 1970s. He initiated collaborative projects with them in the 1980s. We had a joint project funded by the Government of Pakistan and the Government of China in 1986 with Prof. Peng from The Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since 1983, when we started organizing international conferences on natural product chemistry, at every conference we used to welcome a large delegation of Chinese scientists from several wonderful institutions of China.

Back in 2004, Sino-Pakistan Workshop on Pharmacology Standardization of Herbal Medicine was Organized by MOST of China, NATCM of China and MOST of Pakistan at National Level, a joint delegation from two institutions, the Institute of Medicinal Plant Development (IMPLAD), and the Institute of Chinese Materia Medica (ICMM), including the directors and senior scientists from those two institutions, such as Prof. Dr. Liu Xinmin, and Prof. Dr. Chen Shilin, visited ICCBS.

As a result of this contact, we started personal exchanges starting from 2004. We sent Samina to ICMM and Prof. Ahsana Dar to IMPLAD. Many more people went to these two top institutions in China. Since then we developed strong linkages with these two institutions. Recently, a project of ICCBS was approved with ICMM by the Pakistan Science of Foundation.

With the effort of Prof. Liu Xinmin, the member, Expert Advisory Panel on Traditional Medicine, WHO, and his leadership, this circle of collaboration expanded to other institutions, such as Hunan University of Chinese Medicine (Changsha), Affiliated T.C.M Hospital of Southwest Medical University (Luzhou), Xinjiang Traditional Uygur Medicine (Urumqi).

Sino-bioway Group LTD. (Beijing), and others. He brought with him many delegations of Chinese scientists to Karachi in the last two decades. We started several projects with him including training of our faculty members in different organizations in China. For example, he arranged the training of two of our pharmacologists in Animal Research Center of Hunan Province in Changsha. In 2012, he brought with him a delegation of the Institute of Laboratory Animal Sciences (ILAS), Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences...