founder

Dr. Gu was born in southern China in 1961. His father was
an herbalist who successfully treated people with various ailments
using formulas he compounded from herbs he collected locally.
Dr. Gu’s aunt was one of his patients. She suffered severe pain
from rheumatic arthritis and had been treated initially by western
oriented doctors using steroids; the result of which was little
reduction in her pain at the price of serious side effects. Dr. Gu
watched his father then treat his aunt herbally. Within two months
she received complete pain relief, recovered from the steroidal
side effects, and became a healthy woman. Witnessing this made
Dr. Gu curious about why the herbs were so effective.
This experience inculcated an interest in what is now called pain
management in Dr. Gu.

In 1979 he enrolled in Shanghai Medical University, one of the best medical schools in
China, where he studied pharmacology and medicine. As a student he investigated the
mechanisms of the blood vessel dilation that seemed to be the result of certain herbal
treatments that reduced inflammation and gave pain relief. After graduation he was
recruited to do research and to teach as an associate at China Pharmaceutical University.
He continued to study Chinese medicines and focused his research on understanding the
basis for their effectiveness. His study on Beberine (Huang Lian) was published and he was
awarded the Jiangsu Province research award.

In 1989 Dr. Gu became a doctoral candidate in the Department of Pharmacology at the
University of Manitoba. His research was in neuroscience and led to his receiving the
University of Manitoba Research Award and the prestigious Hamilton Fellowship for
research fellows in Canada. Upon receiving his doctorate he was recruited as a post-
doctoral fellow at Columbia University in New York. Dr.Gu spent four years at Columbia
where his research focused on pain. In 1998 he joined the faculty of the University of
Florida, one of the nation’s leading research institutions. He is currently a tenured
Associate Professor at the University of Florida Comprehensive Pain Center.

Dr. Jianguo Gu is the founder, president, and Chief Scientist of Ashi Research, Inc. He has
centered his research on the mechanisms of pain and therapeutic targets of pain treatment
for 20 years. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Pain (www.molecularpain.com), a peer-
reviewed international scientific journal publishing research on pain and pain management.
He is a member of the pain research grant review committee at the National Institute of
health (U.S.A.) and the Wellcome Trust (U.K.). Dr. Gu has published more than forty
research articles on his pain related research in such leading scientific journals as Nature
and the Journal of Neuroscience, and authored a number of book chapters and review
articles dealing with pain and pain management. He holds an international patent on a
protein in human body that is a therapeutic target of several Chinese herbal products. He
is also a sought after lecturer on pain and its causes and management and has spoken at
over fifty international conferences. Dr. Gu’s research has given him a good understanding
of both the mechanism of pain and the scientific basis for the pain-relieving success of
certain natural compounds. Ashi Research’s products are the practical result of this
knowledge.