Back to nature for answers

"It is very hard to find funding in Canada at the moment. My work was not moving ahead any more because there is no funding. There are too many scientists who cannot find government support," he says. "Also, you need chemists, people who can provide compounds and modify them for you. I didn't have that opportunity at home."

Born in Iran, Ben-David received his PhD in Molecular Immunology from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel in 1987. He later served as a professor of medical biophysics at the University of Toronto and senior scientist of molecular and cellular biology at the Sunnybrook Research Institute.

He successfully isolated several cancer genes responsible for the induction and progression of leukemia. He also identified the mechanisms of these cancer genes - knowledge which can be used for the clinical treatment of the cancer.

In the last five years, he has focused on how to develop compounds and drugs against cancer, as he wanted to transfer his work from the lab to the hospital.

Ben-David first visited the laboratory in Guiyang through an introduction by Yang Meili, one of his researchers in Canada who happened to be a former student of Hao Xiaojiang, director of the laboratory.

When he saw how Chinese chemists were working to develop the wide range of flora in Guizhou for the use of TCM, he saw his niche.

"I am the biologist and they are chemists. They develop compounds from TCM and there has to be somebody to understand their functions. I thought it would be a very good opportunity to collaborate."

Apart from the financial and team-building support in China, there are also opportunities for breakthrough discoveries as few studies have been done about natural compounds extracted from TCM.

"When I was in North America, everything I used was already known. Here everything is locally sourced and not yet categorized yet. It's all novel and unique," Ben-David says. "They told me that there are 55 compounds that have not been characterized yet. This is amazing."

As TCM is still not widely accepted globally, he hopes his research can change that.

"The potential is very high. Not many studies have been done about TCM. And not many scientists in the world have access to these compounds. I am hoping to collect all these and collate them in a data library that more people can have access to."

Yang Jun contributed to the story.