• Working in collaboration with various departments of KMC, manipal
• Research collaboration with NBRI, Lucknow
• Research collaboration with CDRI, Lucknow
• Research collaboration with Department of life sciences, Hyderabad
• Research collaboration with pharmaceutical industries like Morepen, Panacia Biotech, Nicholas Piramal and Ranbaxy

Standardisation of Herbal Products

Pharmacognostical standardisation basically deals with the procedures of standardisation, authentication and study of drugs from natural source. It is closely related to allied fields viz. phytochemistry and toxicological screening of natural products. Much of the research in standardisation has resulted in identifying controversial species of plants, authentication of commonly used traditional medicinal plants through morphological, histological, physico-chemical and toxicological parameters, especially heavy metal estimation and radiobiological contamination in plants, prescribed by an authoritative source.

Our main goal is to assess the value of raw materials and to ensure that the final product is of the required standard. Strict standardisation procedures and pharmacognostical studies of medicinal plants are carried out thereby reducing drastically much of the accidents in wrong prescriptions of traditional herbal medicines. We follow the guidelines set up by the WHO for carrying out standardisation procedures of raw herbal products, which basically include pharmacognostical, physico-chemical, pharmacological and toxicological methods to standardise a certain herbal material. Microscopic and macroscopic standards are drawn out, where a plant can be differentiated from another entirely different plant, which may look similar in external appearance. Currently, we rely on genetic fingerprinting and the use of analytical quality-control equipments like HPLC and HPTLC on a large scale for standardisation and identification of herbal drugs. Phytochemistry has evolved as a major branch of Pharmacognostical standardisation in developing markers for the purpose of identification and standardisation. We also draw pharmacognostical schemes for controversial species of plants where the information is made available officially, which would always serve as a useful reference.