The October 2017 Newsletter of The GP-TCM Research Association Editorials 1. The 1000 Medicinal Plant Genome Project (1KMPG) Professor Chang Liu Institute of Medicinal Plant Development Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College Beijing, People's Republic of China E-mail:
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[email protected] The market share of Traditional Chinese Medicines (TCMs) in the health-care industry has continuously grown inside of China in the past years. The annual sales of all TCMs related products are expected to exceed one trillion RMB in the next few years. Nevertheless, the TCMs have not been well accepted by the Western countries to the levels it is expected. Despite the large investment in the development of TCM drugs, relative few numbers of novel TCM drugs have reached the market comparing with those for small molecule drugs. One of the reasons is the complexity of TCM drugs as a result of the high degree of diversities in the raw materials used to make up of medicines. In order to tackle the complexity problems of TCMs from the very root, accurate determination of the genetic composition of raw herbal materials is a must. In recent years, several attempts have been made to obtain the complete genome sequences of medicinal fungi and plants. These include Ganoderma lucidum [1], Ganoderma Sinense [2], Salvia miltiorrhiza [3], Panax notoginseng [4] and etc. The completion of these work have lifted medicinal plant research and development into a new level. However, these efforts are usually driven by individual research group, a coordinated effort will optimize the resources for effective execution of these projects.