Our Story
OUR STORIES
The journey of a
thousand miles begins with one step.~ Lao Tzu
Every journey begins from a single step. LiGNO’s first step began at the Biotechnology Conference back in 2002
when Malaysia’s Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir shared his chronic cough treatment story with a group of over 500 local
and overseas scientists from agriculture, biodiversity, medicine, during a convergence of new sciences and platform
technologies aspects.
"As a trained practitioner of modern
medicine, I should not be saying this but I used to suffer from chronic
intractable cough accompanied by running nose and lung infection. What we call
modern medication took a long time to stop the cough. But persuaded by a
Chinese friend, I took Chinese medicine and the cough stopped. When I had
another attack I tried the medicine again, and again it worked. I tried to find
out what the medicine is made of and I was told that it was tiger’s milk."
Tun Dr. Mahathir said during
his speech at the conference.
Dr.
Tan Chon Seng, one of the Malaysia Research & Development Institute (MARDI)
Senior Researchers who attended the conference with his assistant Ms Ng Tsu
Ting, was intrigued by Tun Dr. Mahathir’s story. It then led to a path down his childhood
memory lane in which his mother often used what was commonly known by the
locals as the “Tiger Milk Mushroom” (TMM) to treat various ailments of the
family members, including himself.
Fascinated by the
mysterious medicinal functions of TMM, and beckoned by the nostalgic memories
of his mother using TMM as unique home remedies, Dr. Tan decided to embark on a
R&D journey of the TMM and suggested Ms Ng Tsu Ting to choose TMM as her PhD thesis topic. The two then set off a
R&D journey on TMM without knowing what is going to happen next or when
they are likely to see any results.
6 months to get an ID
Due
to the lack of documentation and information of the TMM, it took Dr. Tan and Ms
Ng six months to trace and verify the scientific name and scientific species of
TMM.
“At
the beginning, we sourced for wild TMM from the indigenous tribes who are
well-known for using TMM for more than 400 years in the deep tropical forest of
Malaysia, so we can start extracting life activate cells of TMM in the lab.
Meanwhile, we interviewed them
to find out all they knew about the TMM. Besides that, we went to libraries to search for
relevant information, and carried out other online and offline research. ”
Ms Ng admitted it was not an easy task.
After
six months of restless hard work, they managed to identify the scientific name
and species of TMM, i.e., the Lignosus
Rhinocerus. Yet,
they did not have the time to celebrate their little triumph as they were on the verge of
running out of TMM supplies
for continuous lab tastings and scientific verification.
8 years to reach first milestone
Myth has it that
only one TMM would
grow within a 5km radius in
the jungles where tigers hunt. In reality, the scarcity of TMM had
set back the progress of Dr. Tan and Ms Ng’s TMM R&D.
“TMM
can only be located when it is seen growing from an embedded sclerotium when
environmental conditions are favourable. That’s why it’s very difficult to spot
the TMM even for the natives.” Dr. Tan
said, adding that another great challenge they had to deal with in the lab
including the inconsistent quality of wild TMM due to poor harvesting processes, lack of nutrients in soil and
other reasons. It was then when the idea of cultivating TMM
sprouted.
After
8 years of relentless research, Dr Tan and his team eventually managed to
successfully cultivate TMM. With
supports from the Ministry
of Agriculture Malaysia (MOA), LiGNO set up a production plant to cultivate,
promote and commercialise Tiger Milk Mushroom in 2010.
The TMM, once thought to be
uncultivable, was successfully cultivated by LiGNO using LiGNO’s
special formulation and cultivation technology. This proprietary technology is
highly prized as it can be also applied to the cultivation of other potential
tropical medicinal mushroom.
That's one small
step for man, one giant leap for mankind. 
Neil Armstrong
In
Dr. Tan’s case, his determination and persistence in TMM research had breathed new life to the lost national treasure of Malaysia
and popularized the medicinal functions of TMM which in return benefited the quality of health and life of mankind. As a
result, Dr. Tan Chon Seng is recognized as “The father of TMM”, a tribute for
his determination and persistence in TMM research.
This
is not the end but another new beginning, stressed Dr. Tan, as he strived to continuously explore and extradite more
medicinal functions of TMM that are yet to be found.
Note: LBSB, the
Network
Partner of
Human Life
Advancement
Foundation
chaired
by Tun Dr. Mahathir, has been one of the
supportive co-operating partners of LiGNO Biotechnology TMM R&D since 2002.
Our vision
LiGNO, specialised
in cultivating functional mushrooms, is
devoted
to produce quality and effective medicinal
mushrooms derived health care products to help enhance quality
of life, and thus contribute to a
healthier and better future for all mankind.
OUR Mission
We will never be
satisfied
with the good results we had achieved as we believe in ever-growing and improving to serve you better.
Therefore, it has always been, and will always be our utmost mission to ensure continuous R&D, for consistent cultivation process and stringent quality control
measures for all our products. We care greatly about all of this; our mission will always be evolve
and improve.