The Third PGENERAL Cup National Excellent Paper Competition on Pharmaceutical Analysis was held recently in Lanzhou, Gansu Province. Postgraduates Qian Zhengming and Zhong Guoxin from the Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences (ICMS) of the University of Macau (UM) respectively won the second and third prize for their papers titled “Simultaneous Determination of Nucleobases, Nucleosides and Saponins in Panax Notoginseng Using Multiple Columns High Performance Liquid Chromatography” and “Simultaneous Determination of 13 Compounds in Different Parts of Salvia Miltiorrhiza from Different Regions Using UPLC”.

The Competition attracted the participations of more than 100 delegations of various institutes for the control of pharmaceutical and biological products, universities, research institutes and hospitals. Among the 137 papers submitted to the competition, 17 excellent papers were awarded with prizes including one first prize, two second prizes and 11 third prizes.

Multiple columns high performance liquid chromatography is the key technique in the studies of LC-MS fingerprint of global components in 10 valued traditional Chinese medicines, a project supported by the Science and Technology Development Fund of Macau. Qian’s paper reported his employing this technique to realize for the first time a simultaneous analysis of nucleobases, nucleosides and saponins in Panax notoginseng. Zhong developed an ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) method for simultaneous determination of 13 compounds in different parts of Salvia miltiorrhiza from different regions of China, providing a fast method for quality control of Salvia miltiorrhiza,and scientific support to utilize its aerial part.

The PGENERAL Cup National Excellent Paper Competition on Pharmaceutical Analysis was established by the Pharmaceutical Analysis Committee of the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association, the Editorial Board of Chinese Journal of Pharmaceutical Analysis and Beijing Purkinje General Instrument Co. Ltd. in 2004. Held biennially, the competition is one of the most important events in the field, reflecting the current status and research trends of pharmaceutical analysis in China.

Since 2002 when the Institute was founded, ICMS has devoted itself to the research on quality control of Chinese medicine and has fruitful achievements. Qian Zhengming and Zhong Guoxin are supervised by Prof. Li Shaoping, associate professor from ICMS. Master’s candidates supervised by him before were also awarded the third prize and the second prize respectively at the First and Second PGENERAL Cup National Excellent Paper Competition on Pharmaceutical Analysis in 2004 and 2006.

Caption:

Winners Qian Zhengming (left), Zhong Guoxin (right) and their supervisor Prof. Li Shaoping