The State-Province Joint Engineering Laboratory of Targeted Drugs from Natural Products (TDNP), which was established on the basis of Fujian Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Engineering and Xiamen Engineering Research Center for Marine Microbial Drug Discovery, was officially approved by National Development and Reform Commission in November, 2013.

Mainly constructed by School of Life Sciences, Xiamen University (XMU), the laboratory is led by Prof. Shengcai LIN, chair professor of Cheung Kong Scholars Program, bringing together 36 faculty and staff members. The laboratory is equipped with state-of-the-art instruments, such as TripleTOF 5600 System, 600 MHz Bruker NMR, laser scanning confocal microscopy, and auto purification system.

Based on the strategy of economic and social development and national construction plan of independent innovation, our research is directed towards developing the new targeted drugs from natural products. Accordingly, we have constructed the following platforms: (1)target discovery; (2)lead discovery; (3)lead optimization; (4)cellular and molecular pharmacology; (5)preclinical development.

Since its foundation in 2005, the Laboratory has successfully implemented more than 100 projects from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (863 and 973 programs), National Natural Science Foundation of China, and other funding agencies. Researchers in the laboratory have made many significant discoveries in recent years, with many granted patents and papers published in top-ranking journals including Science, Nature Cell Biology, and Nature Chemical Biology. We have also established extensive collaborations with universities/research institutes worldwide, such as Harvard Medical School (HMS), Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), National University of Singapore and Taiwan University.

The laboratory focuses on the core steps and the weakness of new drug development of our country, especially the west coast of Taiwan Strait, and relies on the overall advantages of pharmaceutical disciplines of XMU and the good infrastructure of innovative drug platform. This Lab is to provide not only integrated services of innovative drug discovery, but also support of single technology unit for local businesses such as drug screening for a particular target, chemical synthesis, pharmaceutical analysis and drug efficacy evaluation.

As the exclusive small molecule drug innovation platform at the west coast of Taiwan Strait, the State-Province Joint Engineering Laboratory of Targeted Drugs from Natural Products will be dedicated to train high-level pharmaceutical professionals and accelerate the construction of pharmaceutical disciplines and cooperative innovation system of pharmacy in Taiwan Strait region.