The New Zealand–China Non-Communicable Diseases Collaborative Research Centre (NCD CRCC) is a partnership of the three health and wellbeing National Science Challenges – A Better Start, Healthier Lives and Ageing Well.
The NCD CRCC was formed in 2016, over the last four years NCD CRCC has worked to establish meaningful relationships between leading NCD researchers in New Zealand and China and aim to build long term and enduring connections with researchers who are working on similar problems. NCD CRCC has arranged for many NZ delegations to visit China and visits to New Zealand by groups of Chinese scientists on a number of occasions. These activities have led to the signing of 10 MoU’s with prominent research establishments in China so the centre is now in a position to initiate and support collaborative research.
MBIE recently announced that the NCD CRCC will receive an additional funding of $1.6M to support joint research projects over four years. The NCD CRCC has identified three areas of joint research which the centre believes to be most likely to generate meaningful outcomes in the short-term as well as long-term collaborations which will lead to improved health outcomes among the citizens of both countries. The three areas are cancer research, modernisation of traditional medicine and brain research and five projects will receive funding.
Cancer researcher Professor Parry Guilford from the University of Otago is working on “The Early Detection and Improved Diagnosis of Diffuse Gastric Cancer” and to simplify new methods to diagnose the cancer. Prof Guilford is collaborating with the Department of General Surgery of the Fifth People’s Hospital of Shanghai, Fudan University, China.
A team from the School of Pharmacy, University of Otago (Professor Sarah Hook, Associate Professor Arlene McDowell, Dr Allan Gamble and Dr Shyamal Das) are working on “Modernisation of traditional medicine” and are collaborating with researchers from the School of Pharmacy at Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, China. The project will develop improved bioactivates and formulations with increased activity and reduced toxicity using cutting-edge techniques.
Brain research have three projects;
1) University of Auckland’s Professor Russell Snell’s project is “The cellular basis of Huntington’s disease” and he is collaborating with Associate Professor Linya You at Fudan University, China.
2) Professor Tim Anderson, University of Otago in Christchurch is collaborating with Professor Jian Wang, Fudan University, Huashan Hospital, China. Their work is on “Artificial intelligence motion capture for evaluation and diagnosis in Parkinson’s disease”.
3) Professor Ping Liu, University of Otago collaborates with researchers at the Shanghai Mental Health Centre, University of Science and Technology and Anhui Medical University, China. The project focuses on “Biomarker identification and validation for Alzheimer’s disease and clinical high-risk syndrome of psychosis – a metabolomics approach”.
For more information please contact the NCD CRCC, ncd@crcc.nz