On a herbal route

Yaacov Ben-David and his research team in Guiyang. The biologist says he's glad to have built an international-level laboratory. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Canadian biologist Yaacov Ben-David and his Guizhou team are isolating TCM components for cancer research, Liu Xiangrui reports.

Since Canadian biologist Yaacov Ben-David put down roots in Southwest China's Guizhou province, he has been driven by a desire to understand how traditional Chinese medicine works.

Ben-David, 61, was born in Iran and received his PhD in molecular immunology from Hebrew University in Israel, in 1987.

He worked for the University of Toronto for more than 20 years since the early 1990s and also served as a senior scientist at the Sunny-brook Research Institute in the Canadian city for years.

"If we find out what are the active compounds that actually help in TCM, then we have already translated it(the result) and the entire world will benefit," says Ben-David.

He is now the director of a tumor pharmacology research unit at Guizhou's Key Laboratory of Chemistry for Natural Products, an affiliate of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.