Calendar 2005–06

Faculty and Departmental Research/Consultancy Units 135 The Drug and Poisons Information Bureau Tel.: 2635 1111 Fax.: 2145 7160 E-mail: dpib@med.cuhk.edu.hk Website: http://dpib.med.cuhk.edu.hk The Drug and Poisons Information Bureau, run by the Division of Clinical Pharmacology, was established in 1987. It gives advice to health care professionals on the diagnosis and treatment of all forms of poisoning and adverse reactions to medicines, and on drug usage in general. It is manned by information officers who are nurses, pharmacists or junior physicians. These front-line staff are always backed up by an on-call consultant physician with a specialist interest in clinical pharmacology and toxicology. The bureau has access to various international databases with a listing of over 500,000 drugs, chemical entities and other items. The scope of its experience ranges from modern medicines, traditional Chinese and other remedies, to seafood and pesticide poisoning. Since its inception, it has conducted substantial research. It is a leading centre in the region in terms of output of peer-reviewed publications, which currently total over 120. The Drug Development Centre (DDC) Tel.: 2649 1747 Fax.: 2649 5514 E-mail: pharmacy@cuhk.edu.hk Website: http://www.pharmacy.cuhk.edu.hk/ The DDC, the only such centre in Hong Kong, was set up in September 2000 with funding from the government’s Innovation and Technology Fund and the private sector. It aims to apply and generate pharmaceutical knowledge in developing high-quality Western and Chinese herbal drugs, especially anticancer, cerebro/cardio-vascular and wound healing drugs, and to help establish Hong Kong as a centre of excellence for the development of therapeutic pharmaceuticals. The DDC incorporates a vast array of inter-disciplinary expertise and facilities within the University, including those related to quality assurance, chemistry, pharmacology (biochemistry, physiology, biology), safety studies, formulation development/pharmacokinetics, and clinical studies. The DDC has multiple laboratories equipped with state-of-the-art instruments for carrying out the step-wise process/studies for drug development. These include the Chemistry Laboratory, Pharmacology and Biochemistry Laboratory, Cell and Tissue Culture Laboratory, Acute Animal Safety Study Laboratory, Formulation Development Laboratory, Bioanalytical Laboratory, and Clinical Study Laboratory. With a drug development infrastructure conforming to international Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) and Good Clinical Practice (GCP), DDC currently provides a wide range of services to the pharmaceutical industry, namely, biopharmaceutical/pharmacokinetic studies, pharmacodynamic studies, drug-drug interaction studies, formulation development, drug quality assurance tests, acute safety/toxicity studies, and clinical studies (especially phase I and II).