About China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences

China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences

The China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences (CACMS; Zhongguo Zhongyi Kexueyuan), formerly the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, is China's national comprehensive research institution for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Established in 1955 in Beijing and now under the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, it combines research institutes, affiliated hospitals and a graduate school in a single academy. Its researchers include Tu Youyou, whose discovery of artemisinin won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. CACMS publishes TCM research, clinical and information services through its official website, cacms.ac.cn, and is profiled here as a knowledge and information institution: a place where classical medical literature, laboratory science, clinical practice and professional education meet.

Founding in 1955 and the 2005 Renaming

In 1955, the academy was established directly under the Ministry of Health, under the name Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in early accounts and as the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in most histories. It was founded in the same year that Tu Youyou, after graduating from Beijing Medical College in 1955, was assigned to work in its Institute of Chinese Materia Medica — a coincidence of dates she noted herself in her Nobel biographical account, marking the academy's 60th anniversary in December 2015 as also the 60th anniversary of her career.

Two later dates define its modern form. In 1986, its affiliation changed to be directly under the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine. In 2005, with the approval of the Central Institutional Organization Commission Office, it was renamed the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences. The new name matters: 'Chinese Medical Sciences' signals a scope broader than tradition alone, covering basic theory, materia medica, acupuncture, information science, history and literature, and clinical medicine, studied with both traditional and modern scientific methods. In the same year, 2005, its graduate department became the first graduate school approved by the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Mandate: Research, Care, Education and Information

CACMS describes itself, and is described in official profiles, as a comprehensive research institution. Its mandate joins four functions that are often separated elsewhere. First, research: into the basic theory of TCM, the active components and safety of Chinese medicines, acupuncture and moxibustion, and the clinical effectiveness of traditional treatments. Second, medical care: through affiliated hospitals that together, in recent published figures, provide over 3,000 patient beds, about 7 million outpatient and emergency visits a year and about 80,000 patient discharges. Third, education: through its graduate school, established as a graduate department in 1984 and inaugurated at a new Pinggu Campus on 28 February 2024. Fourth, information: through its Institute of Information on Traditional Chinese Medicine, its library — described as the largest Chinese medicine library in China, with over 360,000 books — and its journals and databases.

By the end of 2021, according to published profiles, the academy had 6,500 employees and five academicians, hosted three World Health Organization Collaborating Centres, and hosted national professional bodies including the China Association for Acupuncture and Moxibustion, the Chinese Association of Integrative Medicine and the World Federation of Acupuncture-Moxibustion Societies. Those hosting roles underline its function as a national hub: not only producing research, but convening the professions that use it.

Structure: Institutes and Second-Level Institutions

The academy's second-level public institutions show its breadth. They include the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine (materia medica); the Institute of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, with its Acupuncture Hospital; the Institute of Basic Theory of Traditional Chinese Medicine; the Institute of Information on Traditional Chinese Medicine; the Institute of History and Literature of Chinese Medicine; the Institute of Basic Clinical Medicine, which also serves as a Research Center for Standards of Traditional Chinese Medicine; a Medical Experimental Center; and an Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine Health Industry, alongside the Graduate School. Directory summaries count 13 research institutes in total.

Alongside those institutes, CACMS reports four State Key Laboratories and centres and four national clinical research bases in published profiles. The standards centre is especially significant for an information institution: turning clinical experience and classical prescriptions into standards is how traditional knowledge becomes reproducible, teachable and assessable by regulators, hospitals and researchers in other countries.

The Affiliated Hospitals

Six affiliated hospitals are counted in directory descriptions, and four are named as second-level institutions with attached specialist institutes. Xiyuan Hospital, founded in 1955 and described as the first large-scale TCM hospital built by the central government after the founding of the People's Republic of China, integrates medical treatment, scientific research, education and health care; it houses the Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases and the Institute of Geriatrics, has 36 clinical departments, about 800 beds and over 1,700 employees in its own published introduction, and is a site of a WHO Collaborating Centre for Traditional Medicine.

Guang'anmen Hospital, also founded in 1955 near the Guang'anmen in Beijing, is a Grade A tertiary TCM hospital and the academy's Second Clinical Medical Research Institute, housing the Institute of Oncology; it became a Grade A tertiary hospital in 1993 and took its present CACMS name in 2005. Wangjing Hospital houses the Institute of Orthopedics and Traumatology, and the Eye Hospital houses the Institute of Ophthalmology. This pairing of hospital and institute is the academy's characteristic design: wards generate clinical questions and data, institutes study them, and results return to the wards as guidelines and new treatments.

Tu Youyou, Project 523 and Artemisinin

No account of CACMS is complete without Tu Youyou and artemisinin, the clearest example anywhere of traditional medical literature yielding a modern drug. In 1967, a national drug research project known as Project 523 was set up to find treatments for malaria. Tu, working at the academy's Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, was appointed head of the Project 523 research group at her institute in 1969. Her team screened over 2,000 traditional Chinese recipes and made 380 herbal extracts, testing them in mice, and compiled hundreds of discoveries in a collection of anti-malaria prescriptions drawn from classical texts and practitioners.

The breakthrough was methodological as well as botanical: inspired by an ancient description of preparing Artemisia annua (sweet wormwood, qinghao) without heat, Tu's team used a low-temperature extraction process that preserved the sensitive active molecule, artemisinin. Artemisinin-based treatments went on to save millions of lives worldwide. Tu received the Lasker Award in 2011 and, in 2015, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine — the first medical Nobel Prize won by a scientist based in China, as academy and Nobel accounts note — and in 2019 she received the Medal of the Republic. She did this, as biographical accounts stress, without a doctoral degree, without research experience abroad and without membership of a national academy at the time, working her whole career inside this one institution.

Research Output, Journals and the Library

CACMS hosts journals including the Chinese Journal of Integrative Medicine and the Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the latter indexed in science citation databases and, as the academy reported in 2024, in the Directory of Open Access Journals. Its researchers publish across TCM pharmacology, acupuncture, integrative medicine and clinical studies; Nature Index listings record a substantial annual paper output for the academy. A landmark earlier result noted in its history is the 1996 first prize of the State Science and Technology Progress Award for research on the syndrome of blood stasis and on promoting blood circulation and removing blood stasis — a core TCM concept translated into a programme of modern clinical research.

The information infrastructure is equally part of the output. The Institute of Information on Traditional Chinese Medicine and the Institute of History and Literature preserve and organise the documentary base of the field — classical texts, prescriptions and modern literature — while the academy's library, at over 360,000 volumes the largest Chinese medicine library in China in its own description, serves researchers nationally. In 2020 the academy also sent TCM medical teams to assist Hubei Province during the COVID-19 epidemic and developed traditional Chinese medicines for its treatment, according to its published history, an episode that again joined research, clinical care and public information in one response.

Leadership and Notable Figures

Published profiles list Luqi Huang as president of CACMS. Beyond its presidency, the academy's notable figures include, besides Tu Youyou, Zhang Boli, Li Lianda and Tong Xiaolin, all named in accounts of the academy's academicians and leading experts. Xiyuan Hospital's own introduction similarly notes staff including academicians, national masters of Chinese medicine and nationally famous TCM practitioners, with dozens of doctoral and master's supervisors and studios of veteran experts used for apprenticeship-style training. That studio system is a distinctive information practice: the experience of senior physicians is formally transmitted to younger clinicians inside the institution, rather than being left to chance.

International Role and How to Use CACMS as a Source

CACMS is China's principal bridge between TCM and the rest of the world. China Daily reported in July 2025, at the academy's 70th anniversary, that vice-president Li Kun said it had signed more than 170 cooperation agreements with medical institutions in more than 40 countries and regions, established five overseas centres, and formed long-term partnerships with leading universities and hospitals worldwide. Earlier profiles record national-level overseas TCM centres built jointly with partners including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Italy and Austria, and seminars held in over 100 countries. Xiyuan Hospital reports welcoming experts from over 100 countries and regions and providing TCM training for more than 3,000 people from over 80 countries.

For WorldNM readers, the verified essentials are: founded 1955 in Beijing; renamed in its present form in 2005; under the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine; address given in profiles as No. 16 Nanxiao Street, Dongzhimen, Dongcheng District, Beijing; website cacms.ac.cn. Use it as a source for authoritative TCM research, clinical guidelines and standards, the history and literature of Chinese medicine, and graduate education in the field — and as the institutional home of the artemisinin story, the strongest documented case of a classical medical text leading, through systematic laboratory work, to a medicine that changed global health.