Opening Sino-Dutch Centre for Preventive and Personalized Medicine

On May 27th, 2010 Tini Hooymans (TNO) opened the Conference in honor of the start of the Sino-Dutch Centre for Preventive and Personalized Medicine (SD PPM).

The Chinese Minister of Health was present by a video message and at the lunch the Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs, Maria van den Hoeven, joined the event as well as the Chinese ambassador in The Netherlands, Mr. Zhang Jun. An important Chinese delegation from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Engineering as well as of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology together with the SD PPM partners of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) came to The Netherlands on this special occasion.

In the SD PPM the latest insights in systems biology are used to understand en combine diagnostic principles from the Chinese with those from the Western health care. Jan van der Greef is the initiator and the engine of this initiative, of which also the Netherlands Genomics Initiative and the University of Leiden (as well as the Netherlands Metabolomics Center) are partners.

Click here to see the official announcement.

The Sino-Dutch Centre for Preventive and Personalized Medicine

Following a visit by a delegation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) to the Netherlands in early 2007, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed in the Chinese city of Dalian between CAS, NGI, NWO and the Dutch research institute TNO on the set up of a joint research centre: “The Sino-Dutch Centre for Preventive and Personalized Medicine”.

This joint effort aims to bridge the holistic and personalized approach of Chinese medicine and the upcoming systems biology approach in contemporary life sciences research. Starting point of the collaboration is the view that combining knowledge and methods of Chinese and Western medicine offers a unique opportunity to fuel the development of a whole new generation of diagnostics for both preventive and personalized health care.