We were very pleased to finally be able to have some in-person meetings at the end of June this year, now that the covid restrictions have eased. The UK investigators (Dr Chris Serpell, Prof Michelle Garrett, and Dr Rebecca Cassidy) flew over for three days of meetings to plan future collaboration and deepen our understanding of the situations in Viet Nam. Do visit the Gallery page to see more photos.
On the first day we had our first in-person Executive Board meeting at VAST in Hanoi – some of these collaborators we’ve never had a chance to meet before. Lots of exploration of future possibilities, which are really fanning out.
After that, we had a tour of the labs at the Institute of Chemistry at VAST, and the UK team were finally able to see Centella asiatica in the flesh. The plants are dried up on the roof, and they have a very pleasant chocolatey aroma. It’s a no small task to get pure madecassic acid out of the plant – it’s an iterative chromatography job led by Dr Thao Tran, and Dr Tran Van Chien then works on the chemical modifications.
We then went to tour the biology labs at the Institute of Biotechnology and plan further experiments with Prof Thao Do.
On the second day, we got up extremely early to catch a flight to Hue in central Viet Nam, firstly visiting the fields in the Quang Tho commune where our crops are grown, and speaking with the farmers and administrative leaders.
In the afternoon we visited Medipharco, a drug company, and discussed the route to large scale production.
On the third day, back in Hanoi, we went to the National Cancer Hospital to talk about how clinical trials work in Viet Nam, and what our roadmap towards them would look like.
And then, it was back to the UK for the travellers.