Selling all her land, house and all her prize money-thousands of dollars from her research project in Bulgaria, Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Tram invested in pilot researching Crinum latifolium L. Determined to reach her goal in science, she created Crila - the first capsule produced from Vietnamese herb for effective treatment of uterine fibroids and prostatic fibroids. Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Tram had an interview with New World newspaper on the day of Vietnamese Physicians, Feb 27, 2010.
Strong attachment to Vietnamese herbs
How does traditional medicine mean to you, Ma’am?
Until now, I still remember my preoccupying words of my father (Professor Nguyen Van Truong - the founder of 16 eco-villages in central and northern regions in Vietnam) “Why do we have to buy expensive medicines from foreign countries while our country has a lot of valuable medicinal plants and a talented smart intellectual team? Why don’t we seek to produce medicines from our country’s plants?” Those words have guided me to nature, attaching to Vietnamese countryside on the journey of scientific research to find medicinal products for humans. By now, it is affirmable that all my scientific research achievements were associated with Vietnamese herbs. In 1973, as soon as having graduated from Hanoi University of Pharmacy, I succeeded in making cough syrup for children extracted from essential oil of Coleus Aromaticus Benth Labiatae. When I was a post-graduate at Sofia Technical University in Bulgaria, my doctoral thesis has achieved excellent results as I successfully extracted, researched, and determined the composition and structure of 45 active substances in essential oil of Cardamom, which has opened up a promising direction in perfume production technology. However, after that success, I turned to studying and extracting medicine for uterine fibroids and prostatic fibroids from Crinum latifolium L. (In Vietnam, 59.18% of men over 50 and 76.92% of men between 75 and 79 suffer from prostatic fibroids, according to a survey in 1990 of Physician Tran Duc Tho and his colleagues. The more I researched, the more I realized that traditional medicine holds great and practical significance, and is foundation of all scientific works. We cannot underestimate every blade of grass and leaf because they have their particular value, especially towards medicine.

Modernization of traditional medicine
Did you suppose that modernizing traditional medicine would contribute to boosting the development of Vietnamese pharmaceutical industry?
From ancient times, our ancestors used natural plants for treatment. Nowadays, with the development of science, people have known how to synthesize chemical substances or semi-synthesize substances in chemical industry to produce therapeutic drugs. Besides, we have the ability to synthesize active substances with biological and medicinal activity from natural plants whose quality is not inferior to products made from chemical drugs. Furthermore, natural medicines have some advantages such as fewer side effects, usually no toxicity, high treatment efficacy, plentiful resource. We can use materials from animals such as deer antlers; bear bile, shark liver; plants such as ginger, mushrooms, periwinkle, green tea, betel leaves; minerals such as mineral salts. Based on the determination of chemical composition and bioactive substances in natural products, we could plan the material plantation, develop gene resources, improve extraction process of active substances from herbs, and invest technology line with modern equipment for mass production of natural medicines. In my opinion, the modernization of traditional medicine not only contributes to the development of Vietnam's pharmaceutical industry but also makes pharmaceutical sources become abundant, open a new direction for the development of agriculture and create more jobs for rural areas.
How has it affected on economic and social life, ma’am?
Since 1990, there has been a clean medicinal material plantation to export dried medicinal herb - Cassia Acutifolia to France and dried Folium Sennae to Japan. That would be strong, useful, and practical effects starting with creating clean material plantation, creating green and clean environment, contributing to protecting the environment, and ensuring human health. When taking the initiation in medicinal material resource, we will create new products from clean raw materials with high quality. New Vietnamese natural medicaments will contribute to stabilization of rising drug price, for example, Phyllanthus urinaria L. capsule for viral hepatitis... More meaningful significance is bringing Vietnamese-branded specific drugs to the international pharmaceutical market, glorifying our Vietnam.
Preoccupying feelings
It’s really a long difficult way from medicinal material export to Vietnamese-branded medicine export. According to you, what is the biggest obstacle on the integration of Vietnamese pharmaceutical industry?
First, we need to confirm that the development of traditional medicine is always associated with the development of science, so that from choosing plantation to applying technology process to extraction and production must be based on specific scientific research. Many years ago, dried Cassia Acutifolia was returned after being exported due to loss of anticancer bioactive substances under disqualified manufacturing process. We expect people to understand clearly that not everywhere can be the ideal land for medicinal herb cultivation, since climate and soil are the main factors determining their bioactive substances. The responsibility of ours and people working in pharmaceutical science sector is to research to find out the plantation that can create valuable and helpful gene resources for pharmacology and instruct people to perform a standard cultivating process. For example, Crinum latifolium L. used to produce Crila can be grown in areas from Hue towards south; purslain (raw materials to produce medicine for hemorrhoids) is suitable in the northern provinces of our country.
What is your opinion about the fact that on the market appears a sharp increase in advertisements about supplements derived from herbs having cancer treatment efficacy?
Advertisement is an effective mean of marketing, thanks to that, supplements can be sold like hot cakes and many businesses gain high sales. However, no matter how good supplements are, they are only useful for prevention and treatment support, not for therapeutic effect. We also have many Vietnamese-branded supplements such as Crilin capsule, Phyllanthus urinaria L. tea, Crinum latifolium L. tea, Hibiscus subdariffla L. tea, Ganodema lucidum tea, etc., which have similar effects but affordable prices for people (because of domestic production, not poor quality). Price of supplements - especially products imported from foreign countries is very high, from 200,000 to millions of VND/box, while price of Vietnamese medicine for treatment of uterine fibroids and prostatic fibroids is only 52,000 VND/bottle of 40 capsules. The most dangerous thing is that after realizing Crinum latifolium L. is capable of treating tumors, many people – even oriental medicine manufacturers supposed that all Crinum plants are capable of curing diseases, so they arbitrarily pick its leaves or purchase them without testing. There are many types of Crinum plants identical to Crinum latifolium L. such as Crinoideae and white-flower Crinum. Besides similar appearance, the taste of their dried leaves are also alike, however the two latters have toxicity, harming liver and kidneys.
Do you have any advice for patients?
First, patients need to be examined at reputed hospitals or clinics for accurate diagnosis of disease condition. Then, their treatment course with medicine has to be conformable to physician’s instructions. Once you have the disease, you must be treated with medicine. For those who have uterine fibroids and prostatic fibroids, if wanting to be treated with Crinum latiolium L. leaves, they should buy or pick them from standard material plantation and should notice that only Crinum latifolium L. cultivated from Hue towards South has therapeutic bioactive substances. If you buy dried leaves, the raw material must have clear origin, so that you can avoid “spending money on a quack doctor and only getting worse”
  Thank you and wish you a healthy new year to continue to find useful remedy for life!