The professional pursuit of a post-85 "double doctor of traditional Chinese and Western medicine" - the third TCM person on the road of inheritance and development

Henan Daily reporter Li Xiaomin

In the field of traditional Chinese medicine in our province, Li Jitian, born in 1988, is a dazzling new star.

As one of the few "double doctors of traditional Chinese and Western medicine" in the country, at the end of last year, Li Jitian had one more identity: doctoral supervisor.

At 10 p.m. on February 9, Li Jitian was the last to walk out of the laboratory. "Time is tight and the task is heavy, so we have to race against the clock." At present, he is leading the team to conduct pharmacological analysis of a traditional Chinese medicine preparation in Luoyang Orthopedic Hospital in Henan Province.

Li Jitian said that Chinese medicine is known as the art of Qihuang, and if you want to go to the international stage, you must not only have "skills", but also "numbers". Because, speaking with data, Chinese medicine can be better recognized by the world and further carried forward.

Li Jitian was born in Luoyang to a family of traditional Chinese medicine, and has planted the seeds of medicine in his heart since he was a child.

In 2011, after graduating from Nanchang University School of Medicine with a bachelor's degree in clinical medicine, he started the study abroad mode. Because of his outstanding achievements, he received his master's degree a year in advance and obtained a doctorate from Texas State University in the United States.

In January 2018, the first Henan Provincial Talent Attraction Innovation and Development Conference issued an invitation to him. Without any hesitation, he resolutely gave up his high overseas salary and returned to his hometown of Henan to join Luoyang Orthopedic Hospital in Henan Province.

Slowly, he discovered that chinese medicine had too many treasures to study. For example, in the century-old Luoyang orthodontic bone, there are many predecessors based on their many years of medical experience to develop traditional Chinese medicine preparations, the effect is very good and recognized by patients, but if you want to ask which ingredient in the medicine is working, how it works, but no one can say clearly.

This situation is common in TCM research. However, there are also exciting examples.

Professor Tu Youyou extracted artemisinin from Artemisia annua, which gave Li Jitian great enlightenment, and his passion was ignited again.

In order to improve his understanding of TCM, he studied hard after work and was admitted to Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine in 2020 to pursue a second doctorate (on-the-job).

As the director of the molecular biology laboratory of Luoyang Orthopaedic Hospital (Henan Orthopaedic Hospital) in Henan Province, Li Jitian believes that clinical practice and medical research are a pair of wings for medical development, and the two must complement each other and promote each other. "Only by closely integrating clinical and scientific research can we better benefit humanity." He said.

Li Jitian's specialty is bone tumors, he said, the incidence of this disease is mainly children, for this disease currently there is no good treatment, mainly chemotherapy plus surgery, and this is a great trauma to the child.

How to use traditional Chinese medicine to prevent and treat bone tumors and other orthopedic-related diseases has become a problem he has pondered bitterly. At present, he not only aims at the frontier topics of bone tumor research at home and abroad, innovates the TCM tumor diagnosis and treatment mode that combines traditional Chinese medicine and modern technology, and successfully applies for the establishment of Henan Provincial Engineering Research Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Bone Tumors in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and he is determined to build the center into a scientific and technological achievement transformation base with international influence.

In 2021, Li Jitian was elected as a representative of the 11th provincial party congress, and he felt that the responsibility on his shoulders was heavier.

"Accelerating the innovation and development of traditional Chinese medicine inheritance is the task entrusted to us by the times, and improving the level of scientific research and innovation of traditional Chinese medicine, based on solid data and integrating with modern health concepts, is the only way to make traditional Chinese medicine better benefit the people." Li Jitian is full of confidence in the direction of his scientific research and clinical practice.