CAS researchers have achieved fresh progress in their studies of medical plants in the family Schisandraceae, making contributions to the new drug development and the sustainable exploitation of the local resources of herbal medicine. Schisandra is a woody vine with numerous clusters of tiny, bright red berries. The fully ripe, sun-dried fruit is a traditional Chinese medicine. It is purported to have sour, sweet, salty, hot, and bitter tastes. This unusual combination of the flavors is reflected in schisandra's Chinese name wu-wei-zi, meaning "a fruit of five tastes." Two dozen additional species within its family, Schisandraceae, are also believed to have pharmacological effects. China is noted for its rich resources of the plants in the family of Schisandraceae. Of the 50 species in the world, about 30 are native to this country. Furthermore, the majority of them are found to have medical values. In southwest China's Yunnan Province, 18 kinds of such plants have been used for medical purposes. However, little is known about many of their chemical constituents and pharmacological functions. With the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and special funds for new drug development from the Provincial Government of Yunnan in recent years, a research team headed by Prof. SUN Handong from the CAS Kunming Institute of Botany has made significant progress in their systematic research into the chemical components and bioactivity of several medical plants in the family Schisandraceae. So far, Prof. Sun has published 14 research papers on the topic, and filed for four patents. His studies have received attention in the S&T community. Prof. Sun, who is a CAS member, started his studies of the chemical constituents of the plants as early as in the 1990s. Over the past five years, his team identified more than 300 compounds in such plants, including 80 new ones, which fall into such chemical types as triterpenoid, lignan and sesquiterpene. His discovery of novel nortriterpenes deepens people's understanding the chemical components of such plants. The research team also made new progress in its studis of bioactivities of the plants by identifying 13 compounds that clearly show anti-HIV activity. In 1996, he isolated nigranoic acid, a triterpenoid from Schisandra sphaerandra that showed activity in several anti-HIV reverse transcriptase and polymerase assays. Their studies suggest that one of compounds, schizandrin, noted for its strong anti-HIV activity, could be used as a candidate for the development of anti-HIV drugs. At present, pre-clinical research has been underway on schizandrin as a new drug.