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India obtains promising leads in medicinal plant research
New Delhi, Aug 22: India`s researches on medicinal plants used in Ayurveda have obtained promising leads for 19 diseases, including cancer, TB, malaria, hypertension, ulcer, dementia and parkinson disease.
New Delhi, Aug 22: India's researches on medicinal plants
used in Ayurveda have obtained promising leads for 19 diseases,
including cancer, TB, malaria, hypertension, ulcer, dementia and
parkinson disease.
Tests reveal that the therapeutic activities of widely used plants in Ayurveda were found to be much superior to well-accepted drugs in the market, Union Science and Technology Minister Murli Manohar Joshi told a meeting of parliamentary consultative committee of his ministry here today. Under the new drug discovery programme, the extracts (both plant based and microbial) as well as single molecules had been bio-evaluated for various diseases. It was proposed to collect data regarding clinical trials and toxicology on 500 most widely used plants in Ayurveda.
Dr Joshi said 172 member countries of the world intellectual property organisation, including the US, had appreciated and accepted the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) as a model format for patent requirements.
The TKDL, targetting Ayurveda in the first phase, had documented 36,000 Ayurvedic texts detailing medicinal qualities of the traditional systems of medicine, in five international languages.
Tests reveal that the therapeutic activities of widely used plants in Ayurveda were found to be much superior to well-accepted drugs in the market, Union Science and Technology Minister Murli Manohar Joshi told a meeting of parliamentary consultative committee of his ministry here today. Under the new drug discovery programme, the extracts (both plant based and microbial) as well as single molecules had been bio-evaluated for various diseases. It was proposed to collect data regarding clinical trials and toxicology on 500 most widely used plants in Ayurveda.
Dr Joshi said 172 member countries of the world intellectual property organisation, including the US, had appreciated and accepted the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) as a model format for patent requirements.
The TKDL, targetting Ayurveda in the first phase, had documented 36,000 Ayurvedic texts detailing medicinal qualities of the traditional systems of medicine, in five international languages.
Dr Joshi said the work on Siddha, Unani and Yoga was under various stages of preparation. The TKDL had so far identified 1274 medicinal plants.
A lot remains to be done with three crore manuscripts to be scouted and bring to the fore our vast reservoir of traditonal knowledge.
Bureau Report