The source of plant extracts in this medicine library was provided by Professor Yi-Sheng Chen of the Department of Pharmacy of Kaohsiung Medical University (retired, currently an honorary professor of the Department of Pharmacy of Kaohsiung Medical University). It is currently managed by Professor Xun-Shuo Chang, who continues to collect native plants in Taiwan to expand the diversity of plant samples.

There are about 4,500 native plants in Taiwan, which are easily accessible, and there are about 3,000 plant populations that are sufficient for research. Professors Chen Yisheng and Zhang Xunshuo have collected nearly 2,000 plant samples and extracted each available part (roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits, whole plants, etc.) separately with methanol. A total of nearly 4,000 crude extracts have been prepared, of which 3,400 crude extracts are currently open for application.

The plant samples in this medicine library were provided by the Ku Yen-Tsao-Yun Plant Conservation Center ( http://www.kbcc.org.tw/tw/ ). The Ku Yen-Tsao-Yun Plant Conservation Center was established in 2007 with part of the land of "Taihe Farm" donated by Ms. Ku Yen-Tsao-Yun. It was established with the long-term support of Mr. Ku Cheng-Yun, Chairman of the Taiwan Cement Corporation. Mr. Li Jiawei, Professor of the Department of Life Sciences at National Tsing Hua University, serves as the Executive Director of the Center. The goal of the Center is to build a Noah's Ark for plants and implement international tropical plant conservation.

Our team started to cooperate with the Ku Yen-Tsao-Yun Plant Conservation Center in 2014. The center provided plant samples, the Institute of Natural Medicine of Kaohsiung Medical University extracted them, and our core built a drug library. Currently, our drug library has more than 81 families and more than 970 species of plants. Since most of the samples are stems (/branches) and leaves of plants, we use 2 to 4 solvents of different polarities for layered extraction. Currently, there are 2,874 crude extracts/layered extracts in our drug library that are open for application.

This drug library collects and prepares extracts from the "herbs and woody plants" in the list of "raw materials for food use" approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA's list of raw materials for food use has a total of 1,689 items, of which 650 are plants. The sources of materials for this extract library are mainly the Witch Herb Garden ( the-witches-herb-garden.com.tw ), Yuanshan Herb Store, the Executive Yuan Council of Agriculture Seedling Improvement and Propagation Farm, Gu Yanzhuoyun Plant Conservation Center, and Yanshan Tomato Farm. Currently, 292 plants with a total of 344 materials have been collected, and extract preparation has been completed. Currently, these 344 extracts are open for application (referred to as the "plant extract drug library for food use"). We are still continuing to collect and extract materials. This drug library has great potential in product development and application.

Chinese medicine has thousands of years of clinical experience, and its application examples can be found in many ancient Chinese medicine books, which can provide a good source for the development of modern new drugs. Traditionally, Chinese medicine is mostly used in water decoctions, so this extract library follows the tradition, using water and medicinal materials (15 ml:1 g) to reflux for one hour for extraction, followed by filtration, concentration and freeze-drying to obtain water extracts. Currently, 66 water extracts have been opened for application. This extract library can help the scientificization of Chinese medicine and promote the development of new uses of Chinese medicine.

The same Chinese medicine prescription may have slightly different daily dosage, proportion, and efficacy if it comes from different books. Previously, the same product produced by different pharmaceutical companies may have different prescriptions due to different references to different books. In 1990, the Department of Health of the Executive Yuan began to propose the idea of unifying prescription standards, namely "benchmark prescriptions". By 2000, a total of 200 benchmark prescriptions were announced and are still in use today. Domestic GMP pharmaceutical factories or traditional pharmaceutical factories must manufacture benchmark prescription products according to these formulas. The daily dosage of medicinal materials, efficacy, indications, etc. of the same benchmark prescription are the same.

Just like the idea of "new uses for old drugs" in Western medicine development, can we also use modern drug development platforms to find new indications for these benchmark prescriptions, or derive new prescriptions, or even develop new herbal drugs/new Chinese medicines?

Currently, the alliance has completed the extraction of 168 benchmark prescriptions and opened them to academia and industry for use. It is expected to complete the preparation of a library of 200 benchmark prescriptions within 1-2 years.

In order to strike a balance between chemical diversity, drug library size, and the cost of drug library preparation, researchers began to use fractionated extracts for high-throughput screening. The crude extract is further divided into dozens to hundreds of fractions. Since a small amount of preparation is sufficient for drug library construction, the speed of drug library preparation is increased, and the sample volume in the drug library is also a certain amount, which makes this fractionated extract drug library very suitable for high-throughput screening for biological activity testing. The types of compounds contained in these fractionated extracts are much simpler than those in crude extracts. If combined with sensitive nuclear magnetic resonance technology, the possible active ingredient structure in the fractionated extract can be directly identified, solving the bottleneck problem of compound separation and structural analysis.

With the support of the Bioresource Integration and Construction Project, our team began to build a layered extract drug library. We used water and n-hexane to remove high and low polarity components from a crude plant extract. The remaining extract was further divided into 96 layers, and finally these layered extracts were prepared into a drug library.

The plant sources of this medicine library include the Gu Yen-Tsok Yun Plant Conservation Center, local herbs in Indonesia and Vietnam, folk medicinal plants in Taiwan, and medicinal plants in traditional Chinese medicine, totaling 57 different plant materials and a total of 5,472 layered extracts.