In early 2019, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) announced the annual review results of the NSFC-Xinjiang Joint Fund Project, in which a Key Project entitled "Exploration of the mechanisms of a Uygur drug Dracocephalum moldavica L. in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease based on an mRNA-mediated ceRNA network", presided over by Dr. Rui Liu, was granted. This is a Key Joint Fund Project jointly declared by the Institute of Medicinal Biotechnology and Xinjiang Institute of Materia Medica.

Under the background of the Belt and Road Initiative, the current project has deeply cooperated with the pharmaceutical R & D teams in Xinjiang Province of China, Bulgaria, and other countries along the Silk Road Economic Belt, exploring the function and mechanisms of the common ecological plant Dracocephalum moldavica L. in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Therefore, we may clarify the multi-dimensionally spatio-temporal targets of Dracocephalum moldavica L. involved in the treatment of AD and provide new strategies for the development of effective drugs for dementia.

Dr. Rui Liu provided counterpart assistance to the Xinjiang Institute of Materia Medica in September 2014. Since then, She and the researchers of Xinjiang Institute of Materia Medica have been cooperating to perform applied basic research on ethnomedicine to prevent and treat major diseases. The successful establishment of the present project is an achievement of the implementation of the Science and Technology in Assitance to Xinjiang proposed by the central organizations. In addition, it is a new paradigm for sharing opportunities and collaborative innovation between the capital and the border areas.

As for other cooperations, Dr. Yuhuan Li participated in another NSFC-Xinjiang Joint Fund Project, which was a meaningful study on the drug effect and mechanism of the antiviral activity of Artemisia rupestris L. Furthermore, Dr. Liping Bai is a co-project leader of the NSFC Regional Science Fund Project with the Xinjiang Institute of Materia Medica, focusing on the molecular mechanism of the anti-tumor effect of polysaccharides from Brassica rapa L., based on the regulation of macrophage polarization.

So far, our two institutes have cooperatively published a number of high-level research papers. In the future, we will strengthen technical collaboration in more fields and take advantage of the development opportunities of “The Belt and Road” to mobilize the motivation of scientific researchers. Our cooperation orientation is the further development of ethnical medicine resources, providing the theoretical basis and technical support for the modernization and industrialization of national medicine in our country.